


For Everything a Reason

by flyingisland



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Galaxy Garrison, M/M, Pining Keith (Voltron), Post-Canon, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-01
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-21 06:41:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 23,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9536405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyingisland/pseuds/flyingisland
Summary: In Keith's life, the only true absolute was that everyone would always leave in the end.





	1. For Every Ending, A New Beginning

Keith has never felt the need to bond with other people. He’s never reached out with trembling fingers, biting back the butterflies fluttering from his belly all the way up his throat into his mouth behind his teeth. He’s never looked longingly out into a crowd of people, wondering what their lives are like—what sorts of things normal humans think and feel. What sorts of problems they have, who they’re thinking about, who they’ll go home to.

He’s never understood how someone could burden themselves with the lives of others on their shoulders when it’s just so much easier to be alone.

But this, of course, is a lie.

Sometimes he catches himself nodding off into grainy memories of tiny, chapped palms clinging to hard iron swing set chains, kicking his feet higher and higher as the air around him pulls back dark, unruly curls. Sometimes he remembers the blurry smile of a man pushing him, laughing with him, telling him to be careful and to hold on tight as he shoves harder and harder until Keith can see the distant houses over the trees.

And sometimes he imagines it: a normal life. Being one of the 3.5 children behind a white picket fence in a nice, peaceful suburban neighborhood. He imagines going to school on a full stomach, talking to his friends, staying up late with a flashlight under his blankets as he cracks open the spine of his favorite book. He wonders if freshly made breakfast smells as good as Lance and Hunk always pretend that it does. He wonders if a mother’s hug could really be as all-consuming and oh-so warm as everyone else seems to think that it is.

He imagines standing in a stuffy hospital room in dim light, with the Lysol smell that clings to the blankets and the bone-white walls itching the back of his throat. He thinks about the sputtered cough of the CPAP machine, the beeping of the heart monitor, the tangled web of various tubes twining around the bed into his father’s feeble arm. His dad might look at him with hollow eyes, like a skeleton draped in the thin fabric of human skin. His smile might tug at the wrinkles around his eyes and his lips, pulling at the leather of it, exposing too big and too white teeth. The curtains would be drawn closed with the smallest sliver of light stabbing into the shadows of the room—as though the sun might chase away his father’s life-force like a vampire in all of the old movies that he can remember.

And maybe his mother would be crying somewhere in the corner, clutching his father’s other hand. She’d be old and grayed, a ghost of the woman that she probably once was—stranded in the end of her tragically short stay on this Earth as she’s threatened to live out the rest of it alone.

He wonders, as he thinks about the Hollywood flat-line, as he imagines the way that the nurses would rush in and the doctor’s face would become stony and unreadable when he told them that his father was really gone, if the pain of letting go could ever be worth the joy and the exhilaration of really, truly loving someone.

His white-picket fence life would end, someday. Eventually, he would have to let it fade away into nothing.

Eventually, he would be alone—just as he is now, just as he’s always been.

And he wonders if maybe it’s better to never reach out at all.

He might have tried, at some point, to close himself off completely. He might have locked the doors to his heart tight—like a steel door wrapped in barbed wire. Like the doomsday prep room that he remembers stumbling in on in his father’s basement. At the time, he hadn’t comprehended it. He’d been too young to understand. He’d wondered why his dad would want to close them off from the rest of the world, why they had to live alone so far away from any other houses. He’d wondered why they had to drive an hour to get to the park. He’d wondered why he wasn’t allowed to go to school.

His father had told him, _“Keith, other people will hurt you. Don’t ever trust them with anything that matters.”_

And Keith had absorbed it like a sponge. Within him, a sickness had begun to grow. When his father left without a trace, he’d wondered only if the cautionary tales of other people’s cruelty and abandonment had applied to his father as well—if really, within this entire planet of human beings, he couldn’t trust anyone but himself.

He’d allowed that sickness to fester deep inside of him. It had tethered its claws in the depths of his heart, growing so strong and unyielding that one day, he realized that he didn’t care about anyone. He’d pass by classmates in the hall. He’d return home from a long day and ignore the tired smiles of his foster parents.

His peers would call him weird. They’d whisper about him behind his back, as though the bubble of secrecy that he’d wrapped so tightly around himself was too thick for him to hear them. The ever-changing faces of his foster families began to meld into one solid image—one constant blur. Until eventually they were an interchangeable myriad of smiles and names, of greetings as he walked in the door—of hurt feelings when he ignored them, of misunderstandings and endless calls to his case worker until, inevitably, he was moved somewhere else.

He stumbled through childhood like a ghost. He haunted the halls and the empty bedrooms, the desk near the window at the back of the classroom, the kitchen under the glow of the refrigerator in the dark, when he finally became hungry enough to creep out of his bedroom and eat.

His hair grew out longer and longer, and no one pestered him to get it cut anymore. No one told him to wash it. No one told him to stop wearing the same clothes, or the same frown, or the same storm of silent emotions roiling deep down inside of him, threatening to explode if only someone would push him hard enough.

And his peers at school would prod sometimes. The bullies would think that the scrawny quiet kid was easy prey. He could hear his teachers whispering frantically to the principal as he wiped the blood from his nose on the back of his hand and glowered through the frosted windows at their shadows moving around in the other room.

“He never talks to anyone. He just attacked those kids because they were teasing him.”

“I’m worried for the other students’ safety. A lit fuse like him is dangerous. Who knows when he’ll do something really terrible?”

“There’s something not right about that boy. There’s something very, very wrong with him.”

It would ricochet off of him like light against glass, like his bloodied reflection in the mirror, frowning back. He would feel in this moment as though he were a broken thing, as though everyone else was in on some big secret that he could never comprehend.

How would someone regular react to being picked on? How would a normal kid ask for help?

How would one go about being friendly and getting closer to other people?

How could anyone risk getting hurt when everyone they loved would eventually go away?

His resentment would boil inside of him. He was a silent tidal wave barreling through the unassuming halls. He was a firecracker burning through its fuse. He was a dangerous thing, unfit for a normal, comfortable life.

And six months before he would age out of foster care, he joined the Galaxy Garrison—on a scholarship for underprivileged youth.

No family, no problem, the recruiter had told him, and he’d suspected that they liked it better that way. That maybe family was an issue in a place like this.

That maybe there would be less to sweep under the rug if anything went wrong.

He hadn’t really been bothered by it at the time. He hadn’t worried about anything happening to him. If he were to get into an accident, who would care if another orphan left this world without leaving a single imprint on it? Who would be left behind to cry for him?

He could fade into the shadows of the world completely unnoticed. He could slink silently off into the afterlife without much of a fight.

And maybe it would be better that way anyway.

He was shuffled into a roomy dorm with a bunk bed and two desks. He was introduced to the dining hall and the bathrooms, the rest areas crowded with students already tight knit in their own groups. He’d told himself that he could float through these next few years without needing to make any connections. He’d convinced himself that it would be all-too easy for everyone else to pretend that he was never even here.

And on the first day of class, his instructor introduced the flying simulator.

“Everyone’s going to get a feel for it,” He’d told the class, “And we’re going to start figuring out which groups you guys belong in.”

There was a rowdy kid near the back of the room, who’d already made a few friends between breakfast and the first period of the day. He’d flirted with half of the girls in their grade by the time that Keith noticed him, and when he eventually introduced himself, Keith had scoffed and turned away from his outstretched hand.

 _“I’m Lance,”_ the guy had told him, waggling his eyebrow as though Keith should have been impressed by him, _“I’m going to be the top of our class.”_

Keith hadn’t been sure how someone could be so confident. He had no idea how this guy could have told himself and everyone else that he’d excel when none of them had even tried their hand at driving the stupid thing yet.

All that he knew was that someone like Lance was not the kind of person who he’d ever want to hang out with. And so, he’d turned away, stepping through the threshold into the classroom and throwing over his shoulder, _“Don’t talk to me.”_

Lance had been left in the hallway behind him, still holding up his hand, still smiling as though it would take another ten seconds before his brain caught up with the concept that another person wasn’t just begging for his friendship. Another boy behind him grabbed his arm, lowering it slowly and shaking his head.

 _“That’s rough, Lance,”_ he’d noted dryly, _“That guy totally just blew you off.”_

And at that point, Keith had stopped paying attention to either of them. He swore to himself that he wouldn’t focus on them for the rest of the semester—the rest of the year. Hell, the rest of his time at this school, even. If either of them lasted long enough to graduate.

The cocky guy, Lance, had begun cheering as soon as their instructor told them that they’d be trying out the simulator. He’d turned to his buddy, telling him, “I can’t believe they’re giving us a chance already!” as though he’d just been waiting for his shot to usurp the entire class. Keith had made a mental note to keep an eye on the guy if he really did reach the top. He’d told himself in that moment that landing anywhere but at the very peak of the mountain was not an option.

 _‘You have to earn your stay,’_ he’d told himself, _‘You have to give them a reason to want to keep you around.’_

If he fell through the cracks, he wasn’t even sure where he would go from there. If his time at the Garrison didn’t land him a job working for the military, he imagined that he’d have nowhere else to go. The streets, maybe, digging through garbage and huddling in dark alleyways for warmth. Begging for spare change, just hoping that one cold night would result in a quiet death beneath the wide, open sky and the billions of judgmental stars.

If he failed here, he would be nothing. There would be nowhere else for him to go. He’d fizzle out and he’d die here. And never, for the rest of his days, would he have the chance to prove to himself and to his father, and everyone else who ever overlooked him that he was worth more than a passing glance.

They’d lined up for their chance to try the simulator, and Keith had been too caught up in his thoughts to really pay attention to the first couple of students as they came and went. A few of them earned a pat on the back, a few more earned a frustrated frown and some choice words that had them hanging their heads as they rounded the group to sulk near the back of the line. Commander Iverson seemed as though his expectations were a little too high—as though he truly expected for any of them to blow him away on their very first try.

Lance was the next one in line. He turned around and did something with his hands while winking—finger guns with stupid sound effects that Keith tried to pretend that he didn’t notice—at a few of the girls, accompanied by a lopsided salute in Commander Iverson’s direction before boarding the simulator. Keith wondered how different his life would be if he carried himself with that sort of confidence. He wondered how it would feel to know for certain that everything was going to tip in his favor.

He considered this as he watched Lance fumbling with the controls on the screen above the simulator. He coasted for a moment, wobbling in the holographic version of deep space. He drew nearer and nearer to the target planet, looping clumsily through a few caverns, scraping against the rocky edges and knocking out one of his blasters.

And within seconds, he barreled down to the ground, ending the simulation as he crashed right into the crew that he was supposed to be rescuing, resulting in the fiery demise of everyone involved.

For a moment, everyone sat still and quiet, taking in the carnage that took place over the course of less than a second. Lance had done phenomenally at first, even Keith had to admit that. Regardless of how new he was to the controls, he’d managed to near the planet when no one else could, and just when he’d had his fingers around the prize—just when he’d ventured close enough that capturing the spot atop their pack was mere millimeters away, he’d allowed it to skitter out of touch.

Iverson himself stood stoic and unreadable, but Keith couldn’t ignore the faint hint of color on his cheeks. He seemed blown up and far too stiff, as though the moment that Lance actually pulled himself together and left the simulator, he was going straight for the throat. Keith didn’t envy Lance in that moment—and for the rest of the time that he’d spend at the Garrison, he never would again.

He’d learned that day, as Lance had finally stumbled down the stairs, head low and fists trembling at his sides, that the burn of a bad first impression could stay on someone’s skin for the rest of their lives here.

And Lance never managed to shake it off. Not in the days that followed, and not when Keith turned his back on the Garrison and began his trek through the unforgiving desert alone.

A few more students made their way forward, hesitant after Iverson finished giving Lance a piece of his mind. They were all a little nervous at that point, making simple mistakes, eager just to get it over with and pretend that, at the very least, they hadn’t been the guy who’d wrecked the ship into an entire crew of survivors.

The girl ahead of Keith did well. Iverson told her that she’d improve as the days went on—which, for someone like Iverson, might have been as good as a bouquet of flowers and the guarantee of a cushy job after graduation.

Keith cleared his throat, training his eyes on the floor as he stepped forward. Brow tight, shoulders stiff as his fists clenched at his sides, he’d willed himself to be strong and persevere, to prove to everyone around him that he deserved to be here.

The door to the simulator hissed open. Inside, it was medically clean—like the hospital room that he’d dreamed about, like the bone white walls and the sheets that reeked of Lysol. And the beeping of the machines, slow and steady like a heart-monitor. The humming of electronics whispering like nurses just outside of the door.

This life, he’d thought to himself, was one that he could have never imagined. The chance to do something great, he would have never thought that he’d taken it.

He could hear Iverson yelling something about getting a move on it outside. There were other students waiting. He couldn’t take all day.

He took a seat, swallowing thickly as he reached forward and loosely grasped the controls. The screen in front of him skittered to life—splintered off into images of different stars and distant planets, of meteors striking through the blackness around him, coming close enough that they’d crash right into him if he didn’t start moving.

He allowed his instincts to take over. He thought about his father pushing him on the swing set in the park, of peering over the trees onto the neighborhood far off in the distance, thinking only about how far away he was from everything else. How much further he would have to reach to ever touch them.

He lunged forward, dodged a few meteors, avoided the loops and jagged curves of the cliff-sides that thwarted Lance. The world around him was a blur of passing colors, of the white stripes of stars and the rush of the ozone layer crackling around him. In the distance, he could see the survivors, and he slowed down as he neared them. He could see them waving—blank-faced, robotic. Shadows of real people that he would never get the chance to know.

Slowly, carefully, he landed the ship, and he jumped a little in surprise as the simulation abruptly cut out. For a moment, he thought that he’d failed somehow, and the adrenaline pumping through his veins amplified. He was a trembling mess, hopped up on the drug of flying for the first time. He would have given anything in that moment to fly again—to pour himself out into space and just get lost out there. To feel as though he were one with his ship and nothing else mattered.

For the spark of a moment, he felt whole. He felt as though he’d found a place where he could settle down and finally just _be_.

Outside, he could hear Iverson barking for him to come out. He could hear the chattering of other students, muted by his own heartbeat in his ears.

When the door hissed open, there was silence. Then a big, warm arm around his shoulders, pulling him down. A firm clap on his back, the words too kind and far too impressed to be the Iverson who he thought he’d already pegged down.

“This guy’s a natural!” Iverson boomed, wheeling him around as though to show him off, “This is exactly what I want the rest of you to become! If you can reach even a fifth of his talent, you’ll become successful pilots, got it?”

Everything moved slower then; the world bathed in a thick molasses that dulled his ears and numbed everything but the foreign feeling of being touched. He took in the blank faces of his classmates and he couldn’t comprehend what they felt. To him, they seemed just as mechanical as the smiles of the survivors in the simulation. Just as cold and unreachable, just as far away and difficult to understand.

The adrenaline rush gradually faded away, and he didn’t dare look at Lance. For the rest of the period, he watched his classmates try out the simulator without taking anything in, and he could never shake the feeling of hot eyes watching him, picking him apart.

Or the whispers of a boy whose name he would eventually forget jeering, “He must have cheated! He had to! No one could have done that well on their first try!”

And time gradually passed.

Keith spent a lot of his time taking up as little space as possible. He studied in the abandoned corners of the library during free periods. He holed himself up in his room during breakfast and lunch. Sometimes, he would sneak into the cafeteria just near the end of dinner, and he’d eat whatever was left over. The workers seemed to grow accustomed to his schedule. One of the lunch ladies would save a plate for him in the back. He wasn’t even sure why they bothered with it, why they even cared to get to know him.

For what it was worth, he wasn’t even that nice to them in return. He only took the offered plate with a small, bashful nod—and never a thanks. He could never seem to muster the words shoved so deep down in his throat.

The hunger wasn’t anything abnormal. The loneliness barely even existed at all. He would overhear his classmates talking about each other while he willed himself to shut them out and read. They’d talk about people who they hated, who they had a crush on, who they admired or who they couldn’t understand. He’d think about his father telling him that other people can never be trusted. He’d think, privately, guiltily, in the furthest, darkest corners of his thoughts, that being alone somehow made him better than everyone else.

And sometimes he would hear about Takashi Shirogane—a pilot just like himself, top of his class. He’d heard the name for the very first time when Iverson had posted their rankings.

The ever-cocky, always annoying Lance had stormed past just before he’d gotten close enough to the board to read it. They’d bumped shoulders roughly, and Lance had sneered at him, “Congrats, _Mullet_.”

He didn’t get the animosity, but he let it go. Lance had become such a small, constant annoyance in the back of his mind—a tiny voice always mocking him whenever Iverson would call on him during lecture, a stupid joke told under his breath that anyone within hearing distance would inevitably groan at. He wasn’t particularly looking forward to spending the rest of the year with him and his buddy, and when he got close enough to the paper to find his name, he was surprised to see that he wouldn’t have to.

He found Lance ranked as the top of the cargo pilots, and his buddy—er, Hank, or Hal, or— _oh_ , Hunk. Yes, _Hunk_ had been sorted as an engineer on Lance’s team. His eyes roved the list with growing desperation, wondering if something had went wrong and they’d forgotten him, worrying that this was their way of telling him to vacate his room within twenty-four hours so someone more worthy could take his place.

A large, warm hand clapped against his shoulder, startling him away from his search. He whirled around, throwing up a shaky salute as he spotted Iverson, and before he could choke out a greeting, there was a big finger pointing at the highest spot on the list, and Iverson telling him with something that had to have been pride, “Bet you knew you’d be right there, didn’t you? This place hasn’t seen a pilot so talented since Shirogane enlisted. Hell, I think you’d even be able to give him a run for his money.”

He’d taken that as a compliment, albeit hesitantly. He’d had no idea who Shirogane was at the time. He’d never liked comparisons. He’d felt as though they were carving out a path for him that he could never hope to stray from—but the way that Iverson had said Shirogane’s name, as though he were some sort of mythical creature that Keith should have been dazzled to be compared to—well, maybe there was more to this guy than Keith was understanding at the time.

Gradually, he came to hear the name much more. He would overhear girls talking about how cute the guy was before class. He would catch a mention of him in the halls. Eventually, he’d even put a face to the name: a tall, charming, good-natured sort of person that Keith could never hope to be. He’d been talking in the hall with other upperclassmen. He’d told a joke and everyone had laughed.

And as the bell rang and everyone scattered to get to class, he’d caught Keith staring at him from behind the door of an empty classroom, and he’d smiled.

Keith had never known that it was possible for his skin to feel so hot, and he had a very hard time explaining to himself why he’d slammed the door and waited in a vacant room until well after he was late to class to leave. He hadn’t understood it at the time, what that smile had meant, and what it had meant to himself.

He couldn’t fathom why he cared so much about Shirogane’s smile, or his charm, or how he interacted with his many, many friends.

He didn’t know that he was sizing up the life of a person apparently so similar to himself, and wondering, privately, if he could ever be so happy and so loved.

Between his subtle stalking and the blur of one day to the next, the greatest clarity that he found within the walls of the Garrison was the flight simulator. His peers seemed to avoid the thing like a plague, cursing at it as though it alone were responsible for their hardships, and so Keith found it easy to slip into the room during breaks and ask if he could practice. The instructor in charge would always smile, always clap him on the back in that same way that reminded him so painfully of his dad.

And they’d tell him, _“If only the other students were as studious as you.”_

As though their time spent phoning their families or talking with their friends was wasted. Secretly, he would agree. They could kill time being social. Shirogane could allow his talent to dwindle while Keith only got stronger, and the cocky cargo pilot could struggle to move forward while never putting in the time that it took to be great.

Everyone else could pretend that being loved by other people was important, and Keith would only love the simulator—the flight, the fresh breath of open space. And that could be enough. It _had_ to be enough, because in the end, it was all that he had.

On one such evening, after he’d even skipped dinner in order to spend more time with the simulator, his instructor had knocked on the door, asking him if he’d been in there the entire time.

“Did you eat?” He’d asked, and Keith tried to ignore the concern in his voice, “You know you’re not allowed to skip meals, right?”

“Uh, yeah, yeah,” Keith had lied, powering the simulation down and tugging open the door, “I… stepped out for a bit for dinner. It’s fine.”

The instructor had smiled then, hoisting his bag higher on his shoulder and rubbing at tired eyes.

“Well, I’m calling it a night, so you’d better go back to your room. Checks are in an hour. I don’t want you getting me in trouble for letting you stay in here, okay?”

Keith nodded, climbing out into the room on rubbery legs. His back ached and his eyes felt far too strained. When he blinked, he could still see the fuzzy outlines of false stars twinkling against his eyelids, and despite how convincing he thought that he’d been with his lie, his stomach growled unhappily.

Fortunately, the instructor didn’t mention it. He only pivoted on his heel, jingling his keys as they both neared the door.

As he locked up, Keith waited by his side, ready to salute and wish him a good night.

“You know,” he said slowly, pocketing his keys, “If you do too well on the simulation, they’re going to send you somewhere dangerous. I hear they're considering Shirogane for a mission to Kerberos. So if there’s anyone who you might miss here, I’d try not to shine so bright, okay?”

And, with that, he’d turned around, venturing down a darkened hall toward the instructor's dorms, leaving Keith standing still under the big, dark windows, wondering what could possibly be so dangerous about one tiny satellite.

He’d lowered his salute, grinding his teeth as his stomach groaned once more. The kitchen was surely already closed, and he didn’t have any money in his account to buy anything from the concession stand. There wasn’t anything good there anyway, he reasoned. Just ramen noodle cups and stale bags of chips. Even so, the thought of eating _anything_ had his stomach in a tizzy again. He was too tired, too dizzy, too hungry to handle dealing with his nosy, noisy roommate just yet.

He needed some time to cool off. He needed some space to get his thoughts straight.

Shirogane was going off on a big mission. No matter how hard Keith tried, he could never hope to catch up to him.

He wasn’t sure why that realization bothered him so much—why he kept thinking, no matter how hard he tried to stop it, that he’d never get the chance to know him. Shirogane would leave, and he’d never understand why everyone else seemed to think that they were similar, or why Shirogane seemed so much better at everything in life than Keith could ever hope to be.

Because Keith couldn’t pretend that being alone made him better than everyone else in a world where Shirogane existed. Keith couldn’t claim that relying on no one gave him his real strength, because Shirogane had people who loved him. He had a life back on Earth that intertwined with his success as a pilot. He had friends and he had family, and even still, he was renowned as the most talented of his generation.

And Keith couldn’t stomach it.

He settled down on a vacant bench a few feet away from the classroom door, burying his face in his hands. He allowed the remaining sparkles of simulated stars to fade away in the darkness behind his eyelids, willed himself to ignore his stomach’s hunger, struggled to convince himself that he could stay awake long enough to make it to the library and hide away for the night.

He sat still for a long time, contemplating his choices. He could dig through the garbage around the cafeteria and see if he could find anything edible enough. It wouldn’t have been the first time, but he wasn’t sure if he was willing to stoop so low when breakfast was just around the corner. He could swallow his pride and return to his room for the night. He could listen to his roommate complain about Iverson and how the entire school seemed as though it was out to get him—or maybe he could stay up late while the guy talked to his mom on his stupid contraband cellphone.

Keith had never met anyone in his life so desperate to talk to their family. He didn’t understand that sort of person.

Or, he could wait on this bench until the first warning call sounded—and he could slink back to the dorms, sit still for headcount, and try to figure things out from there.

It was a simple life at the Galaxy Garrison, but he didn’t like being confined. He didn’t like being told when to eat, when to sleep, how long he was allowed to practice the simulator and at which times he should be studying. He liked the idea of shooting off into the emptiness of space—of living by no timetable but his own. He liked the thought of finding himself light-years away from the closest person, living out the rest of his days in the cold embrace of the universe, with no reason to ever want to reach out to anyone.

With no fear of rejection because, of course, there was no hope of meeting another person ever again.

Just as he began to think that wandering back to his room wouldn’t be too bad, he picked up the presence of another person far too close for comfort. Inwardly, he chided himself for not paying closer attention—as he sprung to life and pushed himself straighter in his seat, throwing an arm in front of himself just in case whoever risked getting too close was doing so with the intention of hurting him.

Instead of a bully, or even an instructor stopping by to tell him to go back to his room, he found another student, standing in front of him with their bag slung over their shoulder, smiling down at him with an apologetic sort of surprise that had heat bubbling up under his skin.

It wasn’t anyone from his class. It wasn’t even a person who he’d ever spoken to before, but he recognized them.

Shuffling nervously from foot to foot in front of him, grinning that horrible, winning grin under the overbearing glare of the motion-sensor lights above, was none other than Takashi Shirogane.

Surely nothing more than an apparition of his own nightmares and overexerted imagination, appearing here with no other intention than to inform him that he’d finally gone completely mad.

“You’re Keith, right?” This exhaustion-charged hallucination asked him, so gently that he could barely stand it, “Would you mind if I sat down?”

Keith took a moment to look around the hall, noticing all of the empty benches. He flicked his gaze back up to Shirogane’s face, wondering what he could possibly be getting at—if he honestly believed that Keith would find any reason why he should be allowed to take up space next to him when there were perfectly comfortable spots all throughout the hall.

“I’m not going to stop you,” Keith grumbled, scooting over just a little, “It’s not like I own this bench or anything.”

Shirogane’s smile softened, and he took a seat next to Keith. For a short stretch of time, they simply sat together—Keith counting his uneven, tired breathes, and Shirogane tapping his foot idly against the floor. Just as Keith began to open his mouth to speak, his stomach groaned again.

Cheeks pink, heart thumping a mile a minute, he snapped his mouth shut, glaring off into the shadowed hall and hoping against all hope that Shirogane would get up soon and just go away.

Instead, the guy set down his bag, pulling open the zipper and digging around inside. Keith could hear the crinkling of plastic, and as he looked over to peek at whatever Shirogane was messing with, there was some sort of cake wrapped in saran wrap pressed towards his face.

He stared at it for a long moment, biting back the offended retort that he could feel gnawing at his insides. He didn’t need this asshole’s handouts. He didn’t need anything from anyone. He was doing perfectly fine sitting on this bench alone, and who the Hell did Takashi Shirogane think he was anyway—invading his personal space and pretending that he was some sort of _hero_ for offering him a nasty, smashed up piece of cake from his bag?!

“My mom sent way too much,” Shirogane’s smile faltered for only a moment. “You’d be doing me a huge favor if you took it off my hands.”

Keith’s jaw clenched, and he turned away, wrapping his arms around his waist and snapping his head in the opposite direction. It all began to remind him of when his dad disappeared: when the police scooped him up and dumped him off with his caseworker. When she told him, _“You have to eat something, okay? I’ll get in a lot of trouble if you don’t eat something.”_

He’d been stupid enough to fall for it back then. He’d been blind enough to think that it was anything but her job to take care of him. And Shirogane was the same, no matter what his motives were.

He could feel Shirogane lower his arm beside him and for a mere moment, he felt guilty. For whatever reason, he felt as though he’d done something that he shouldn’t have.

“I guess it’s a little weird to shove food in your face when I haven’t even introduced myself,” he said softly, carefully, as though Keith could explode any second, “I’m Takashi Shiro—”

“I know who you are.”

The silence persisted—stronger, tenser for a moment more.

“Uh, well—” Shirogane laughed awkwardly, “You can call me Shiro. That’s… what everyone else calls me, at least.”

Keith considered momentarily making up some kind of nickname that Shiro could call him as well, but his imagination failed him. If he’d ever had friends, he couldn’t even imagine what they might have called him, if they’d have called him anything interesting.

“So what do you want?”

The question sounded harsher than he’d intended for it to, as it ricocheted off of the walls and bounced back into his ears. But Shiro didn’t falter for even a moment. His smile, still soft and forgiving and light even in the darkness, aimed itself at the little piece of cake in his hands. He worried it gently with his fingers, smearing a bit of icing beneath the plastic.

“I’m leaving soon, so I wanted to meet the new recruit that everyone is talking about,” he said, and his voice didn’t crack or waver, but there was something so hollow about his words that Keith felt as though his breath had been knocked out of him. “They all said that you didn’t like anyone, but I thought maybe they were wrong.”

Keith’s chest felt as though it might cave in on itself. He felt as though he were drowning in the dark. Shiro didn’t look up. He didn’t laugh. He didn’t give any indication that he was lying, that he’d set out to haze the guy who would inevitably take his place. Keith struggled with the newfound realization that some people might have only been filled with goodness and the best intentions.

The some people could be trusted—maybe. That someone like Shirogane might be reaching out for him too.

“So what do you think now?” Keith’s voice was so feeble that he barely recognized it. Deep within his heart, he could feel that sickness quivering, begging for Shirogane to say anything that would allow him to live with his paradigm of human behavior for just a little bit longer.

“I think they were wrong,” Shiro said simply, rising from his seat and setting the cake gently next to Keith, “I think you want to like people, but you’re just as afraid to touch them.”

And Keith chose to aim his glower at the cake. He chose to focus all of his rage on the stupid, smeared frosting and the little sugar flowers pressed up against the plastic folds. He decided that he would hate the idea of Shirogane’s mother spending precious time decorating it just right, sending it off to him with a stupid little note about how proud she must have been—and he would pretend that he didn’t ache as he watched Shiro walk away.

He would pretend that those words didn’t resonate within him, and awaken an emotion deep inside of his chest that chased away the shadows of sickness with the light of something else.

He was thankful that Shiro was going away. He was happy that he might never see him again.

And still, in the guiltiest, most shameful recesses of his mind, he wished that he could get to know him better before he left.

He wanted to throw the cake in the garbage, or even leave it sitting on the bench for Shiro to find the next day. Reasonably, he understood that someone would surely find it before then, but the pettiest, most unreasonable parts of him wished that he could see the look on Shiro’s face if he did happen to find it.

But he realized that it wouldn’t be a frown—Shiro wouldn’t get angry. It wouldn’t make him sad. He’d only smile that horrible little smile, and he’d surely tell himself that this only proved his theory about Keith somehow. And Keith was left unsure of what to do.

How could he spite someone like that? How could he spit in his face without actually, literally spitting right in his stupid, charming, handsome face?

With a scowl, he tore the plastic off of the cake, shoving it rather ungracefully into his mouth. It was just as sweet as it looked, just as filling—made with so much love that he could practically taste it sweetening the sugar.

He felt as though he was piggybacking on someone else’s love. He wondered how many other people Shiro had shared his cake with.

And even as he crept back towards his room and settled in for the night, he couldn’t find it in him to care. He hated Takashi Shirogane. He hated everything that he stood for.

He hated that gentle smile, the way that he wore his hair. He hated the fact that he looked more befitting of being a soldier than any other student around him. He hated that Shiro would be diplomatic and kind. He hated that he was brilliant enough to outshine everyone.

And he hated that he’d allowed himself to be fooled by him too—that somewhere inside of himself, somehow, he felt just a little bit lighter. And that he felt, for the first time in his life, like he wasn’t so alone anymore.

The morning alarm jolted him awake.

It was the first time that he’d ever slept soundly through the night.

His roommate was already long-gone. He’d missed his chance to sneak in some time on the simulator before his morning classes, and he silently cursed Shiro as he gathered his books and pulled on his shoes, rushing off to class.

The halls were barren by the time that he made it outside of his room. He smoothed out the wrinkles in his shirt, hoping that no one would notice that he hadn’t washed his outfit in a few days again, and walked as quickly as permitted toward his class.

He cracked open the door, and in a fleeting moment, as his heart pounded in his ears and he awaited the reprimand that he just knew was coming once he stepped into the classroom, he wondered if Shirogane was ever late. He wondered if he ever got worked up over another person.

He wondered if these sorts of things were easier for someone like that, who seemed as though they had their entire life seamed tightly together.

He would never know, of course. As it was, he and Takashi Shirogane were just two completely different kinds of people.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve went to three funerals in the last eight months, so I wanted to write a story about loss.
> 
> Originally, this was supposed to be one big oneshot, but then... the realization of just how long this might end up kind of hit me! So please forgive me for chopping it up. And I hope you enjoyed it!
> 
> Quick edit: I almost forgot to mention that the title and chapter titles are from [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKqgE8z7PcA). Whoops!
> 
> Edit #2: Okay, so this story is actually going to be cut into three parts instead of two! It's getting so much longer than I anticipated.


	2. Haunted By Wrong Desire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A lion is a lion is a lion.

Keith’s fingers draw lazy patterns over Shiro’s chest, tracing the scars and stemming off to make new paths. His touch is light enough that he’s sure that it probably tickles, but Shiro doesn’t mention it. He only breathes in deeply, tapering off a sigh as he stretches his muscles beneath Keith’s weight and cranes his neck with a lazy, half-lidded smile.

In the darkness of Keith’s room in the middle of the night, tucked away in the castle of Lions when everyone else is surely fast asleep, they find the time to tangle together in the sheets—quiet and comfortable, as though the world around them hasn’t completely torn them apart.

“What are you thinking so hard about?” Shiro asks softly, in the same voice that he’s always used when he’s speaking to Keith—as though if he talks anywhere above a whisper, he might scare him away.

Keith pauses, pressing his fingers a little bit firmer into Shiro’s chest and walking them forward like tiny legs. He allows the silence to sit between them for a moment, biting the inside of his cheek and furrowing his brows.

“I’m thinking about you.”

Shiro laughs like that’s funny somehow—like it’s the last thing that he would expect.

“I’m thinking about how we met.”

 

* * *

 

At the end of the day, exhausted and just ready to go back to bed, Keith ventured out into the hall, wondering if he was strong enough to brave the dinner rush or not. He’d skipped lunch again, and, of course, breakfast had been out of the question. His stomach growled angrily. Not even his own body was used to this kind of strain.

But when he thought about it—working his way through the line, peering out into the cafeteria at so many unrecognizable faces that surely would not be willing to welcome him to their tables, risking being seen by that obnoxious kid from the cargo pilot class who still hadn’t stopped giving him a hard time—he decided that his body would just have to get used to it.

There would be plenty of food on his ship someday, as he journeyed through space. If he could wait just a little bit longer—if he could work just a little bit harder, and be a little bit better—maybe he would eventually make it there.

With that resolve in mind, he turned abruptly on his heel to head back to his room. He’d finished most of his homework in class, but maybe it was time for a shower after avoiding the bathrooms for so long. Any longer, and his roommate and the staff might start to complain again.

However, instead of threading through the groups of students moving towards the cafeteria, he collided with another body—just as warm and soft as he’d come to learn that human flesh could be. He flinched back, throwing up his hand in a salute out of pure habit, and fighting down the color rising dangerously to his cheeks.

“S-sir, I’m—I didn’t mean to—”

“ _Sir_? Didn’t I say that you could just call me Shiro?”

Immediately, as though he’d been burned, Keith stumbled back, throwing down his arm and straightening his posture. Shiro’s dumb smile was back full-force, as though he just _knew_ that Keith had eaten that cake the night before and loved every bite of it.

The bastard.

“Are you following me?” Keith spat, because he only knew how to fight back. He didn’t understand what to do with the feelings telling him to return that smile, to thank Shiro for giving him dinner, for caring enough to reach out to him. He didn’t understand what a person was supposed to do with the sorts of emotions currently circulating through his thoughts at breakneck speed.

Regardless, Shiro laughed, placing a hand over his mouth and cocking his head to the side.

“Well, I was trying to go to dinner before someone so _rudely_ turned around and bumped into me. I guess you could say that I was following you, if you meant that I was walking in the same direction as everyone else.”

So the asshole thought he had a sense of humor. Great. Keith’s jaw tensed. He grasped his fists tightly at his sides. Just as he was readying himself for another fight, Shiro’s smile dropped, and he raised his hands in the air.

“You weren’t going to skip dinner, were you? Why don’t you come sit with me? I’ve never seen you in the cafeteria before.”

It was a flurry of words that took Keith an embarrassingly long amount of time to contemplate. He stood frozen, every nerve within his body on fire as he thought about the sorts of things that people would say if they saw him and Shiro in the cafeteria together. Did Shiro not care what the rest of his friends thought? Did he really think that it would be good for his reputation if he started hanging out with the guy who started fights with anyone who tried to get close to him?

Was this Shiro’s way of throwing up a big middle finger at the establishment that he was so close to graduating from, or was he really so stupid that he didn’t understand that people like himself definitely weren’t supposed to hang out with people like Keith?

For a moment, Keith began to feel a little insecure about the way he must have smelled—for the very first time in his life. His hair must have been greasy, his clothing unkempt. He decided that Shiro must have thought that he was some sort of charity case—must have figured out long ago from either an instructor or his own razor-sharp intuition that Keith was only enlisted at the Galaxy Garrison because of a poor kid’s scholarship.

For the life of him, he couldn’t bring himself to be mad. For whatever reason, be it the way that Shiro was still smiling, or the concern that nearly burned him in Shiro’s voice, he couldn’t find the strength to lash out at him for the slimy rat that he surely was—using Keith as some sort of example of his good graces to win points from the staff.

“I’m not hungry,” was his simple assertion, his last line of defense—far too flimsy and half-assed even in his own ears.

And in the end, just as he’d expected and feared not quite as greatly as he would have preferred, he ended up standing in the dinner line in the cafeteria, torn between pretending that he’d come alone or fully embracing the fact that Takashi Shirogane had invited him there.

Somehow, the noisiness around them only amplified their own silence. It seemed as though all of the groups around them had something to talk about, something to laugh about, some sort of bond that they’d formed while Keith was too busy studying to worry about any of it. In that moment, it made him feel a startling sense of inferiority, as though the mantra that he’d been running through his head since he was a child was nothing more than a stupid excuse to never try to make friends.

He was starting to suspect that this might have been exactly the case, but he wasn’t quite willing to part with that sentiment just yet.

Especially when he still had no idea what sort of motive Shiro had.

One of the lunch ladies smiled at him when he caught her eye. She passed him his tray, turning to whisper something to another worker as he passed. Shiro was far more respectful—bowing shallowly as they handed him his dinner and thanking them in that same friendly, genuine tone that Keith was just starting to get used to.

So he was even nice to the less appreciated staff. Keith was starting to feel as though he was less of a person and more of an apparition of what perfection was supposed to look like.

He followed Shiro from the dinner line as he wound through many busy tables. Shiro stopped briefly to greet a few people, to politely refuse invitations to sit with a few more. Finally, they reached a table near the back of the room, which was, curiously enough, completely empty. He wondered if there was a reason for that; if he would settle down and notice Shiro’s name engraved on the table in gold. Or if maybe everyone left it alone out of respect—if they knew that sometimes he just liked to sit alone, and for whatever reason, they honored his need for a vacant table when so many people were crowding around their own.

Keith took a seat carefully, eyeing Shiro up and down as he did so. As Shiro settled onto the bench across from him, he smiled again—or maybe the smile that he was already wearing only widened, Keith couldn’t tell anymore.

“It’s weird, isn’t it?” He asked, “That everyone is so jam-packed but no one was sitting here? I didn’t get it either at first, but the windows are drafty and one of the legs is uneven. So I guess that’s a deal-breaker.”

He laughed, sending a prickle over Keith’s skin. Keith’s stomach gurgled as he glowered down at his food, wondering why this conversation was already starting to remind him of the stiff interactions that he always managed to have with his case worker and many awkward foster families.

The silence stretched out between them for a moment, and Keith wondered if he should say something. He wasn’t well-versed in this sort of thing. Short of the flight simulator or his self defense classes, he couldn’t think of any interests that he might share with someone like Shiro.

He shouldn’t have been surprised when Shiro continued speaking, saving them from the awkwardness of the quiet.

But still, he couldn’t help but wonder why Shiro cared enough to do so.

“It’s nice to spend time by yourself though, isn’t it? Growing up, it was just me and my mom eating dinner together, so sharing a meal with hundreds of other people is something that I’m still having a lot of trouble getting used to.”

Keith glanced up at that, struggling to muster the courage to eat. Shiro was dragging his spoon in lazy little circles through his potatoes, gaze trapped between their little pile and the assortment of discolored peas. He seemed as though, in that moment, he was caught up in his own memories, and Keith wondered if he ever felt lonely—if he ever stopped and looked at himself in the mirror, and wondered what his life would have been like if that ghost of a parent had bothered to stick around.

Shaking his head, Keith grabbed his fork and stabbed it roughly into the rubbery steak on his plate. He watched as the oils and the gravy bubbled out through the newly made holes, and told himself that someone like Shiro surely didn’t bother feeling homesick when he had such a good life here and now.

“It’s normal to feel a little overwhelmed here at first,” Shiro looked up from his tray, that same smile just a little bit sadder than it was before. “You shouldn’t feel bad about being kind of homesick. The people here are nice, but they aren’t family.”

“I don’t have a family.”

Keith’s words stung as they tumbled out of his lips, working an itchy sort of discomfort up his spine. He pushed down the urge to rise from the table and storm off, but he didn’t understand why. Normally, this would be the point at which he made it clear that Shiro had unknowingly overstepped some invisible boundary. This would be the part where he cut ties before things got too hard.

But he stayed put, spearing his steak with such force that the prongs of his fork worked their way through the Styrofoam plate, spilling out the juices of his dinner onto the tray below.

And Shiro watched him after that—silently, with the most aggravating of pensive frowns. He fetched his knife from the edge of his tray, flicking his gaze down to his plate and cutting off a few pieces of steak. Keith could see the motions of him eating out of his peripherals. He wondered why people always opted to fill the terrible quiet with food. He wondered why no one had ever been strong enough or frustrated enough to finally call him out for the petty, bratty child that he surely was.

Always wordlessly putting up with him. Never giving him the satisfaction of a rise that he so longed for. Never caring quite enough to feel any real passion for him when he’d fallen down, and never taking the time to actually pick him back up.

It had gotten to the point, he realized, that he was far too prickly to touch. It wasn’t worth the bleeding. It wasn’t worth the pain that he inevitably left behind.

He didn’t feel particularly hungry anymore, but he forced himself to eat a little bit of steak. At that point, it had become so mutilated that it was more of a rubbery steak paste, but it felt good to eat—no matter how determined he was that he didn’t need to. He could feel Shiro’s eyes watching him again, picking him apart. It was infuriating, how this guy could sit there with a straight face and pretend that he didn’t have any secret motives. It was even more horrifying that Keith was ready and willing to let him get away with anything, if only he’d stay for a little longer.

Was he really so pathetic that he was going to throw himself under the bus for a little bit of attention? Was he really so starved for affection that this was the new low that he was willing to sink to?

Another shake of his head, and he shoved a second forkful of steak pâté into his mouth. Shirogane made absolutely no sense. He didn’t fit into Keith’s worldview at all.

He was faced with a troubling decision: either accept that people like Shiro could exist, possibly obliterating all of the ideals that he’d been shaped by, or keep picking him apart and searching for the one dark stain that made him just as horrible and flawed as everyone else.

He would prod that weakness, and he would pick at it, until finally, _hopefully_ , Shiro would fold in and prove to him, once and for all, that his father was right and there really were no good people in this world.

“You know,” Shiro said suddenly, catching him off guard, “Commander Iverson told me that you beat my score on the simulator. Do you know how hard I worked to reach that? And you did it on your first day.”

Keith thought that he suddenly understood what all of this was about. Shiro was going to accuse him of cheating, just like so many of his peers. He was going to ask him how he managed to crack the system, and he was going to weasel his way into Keith’s life in order to take him down from the inside out. Keith reached a hand forward, plucking his drink from his tray and taking a long swig. He slammed it down a little rougher than he should have, considering how softly Shiro had been talking, and how calm the air around them was until that point.

With a fire burning brightly in his heart, and eyes so hard that they might cut diamonds, he glared right up into Shiro’s face—challenging and distrustful.

“I got lucky,” he said simply, “ _Beginner's luck_.”

For a moment, their eyes stayed locked. There was no animosity in Shiro’s face, no hint of his underlying intentions, and Keith found it harder and harder to focus on his own anger. He flicked his gaze away, shoving the small pile of potatoes from his plate into his mouth in one go, if only to give himself a reason not to focus on this conversation anymore.

“They say that you’re only getting better,” Shiro’s voice stayed firm and kind. His words never trespassed over the border of genuine wonderment into disdain. Keith was left floundering in the aftermath of it—struggling to piece together what any of it might mean. “You seem to think that no one’s going to talk about you if you don’t talk to them, right? But they’re still going to do it. The standoffish, mysterious act only makes them find you more cool.”

There was something about the way that he said that, like _he_ was actually the one who thought that Keith was cool. But Keith told himself that it had to have just been his stupid, overactive imagination, telling him exactly what he wanted to hear. 

 

* * *

 

Shiro laughs—just as boisterous and genuine as Keith has always remembered it. He pulls himself up a little, reaching forward with his human hand to twine his fingers in Keith’s hair.

“I didn’t really say that, did I?” He asks, a hint of color evident on his cheeks even in the dark, “I sounded so desperate… I’m surprised I didn’t scare you off.”

It’s Keith’s turn to laugh—not so careful, not so guarded as before. Shiro is always so worried that he’s changed too much—that he’s become a person who he cannot recognize in the mirror anymore. But Keith can still feel the glow of him chasing away the darkness in his heart. He can still touch him, and kiss him, and breathe in the healing light that is, and always has been Takashi Shirogane.

Despite everything, Shiro has remained the same: always gentle, always loving, always working Keith into the best version of himself like pliable clay in his hands.

“I thought it was kind of… cute, I guess. I thought you were cute.”

“Did you?” Shiro seems surprised, which, in turn, surprises Keith as well, “I thought you didn’t want anything to do with me. Like if I let you get away, I’d never get to talk to you ever again.”

Keith buries his face in Shiro’s chest, breathing in the smell of him—of metal and of sweat, of the sweetness of his shampoo and the fresh, powdery scent of his soap. His fingers continue their trek about Shiro’s body, as though he hasn’t already mapped out the muscles and the scars—the webbing of black magic burns branded into his side, the creases of flesh torn apart and mended together with impatient hands—a thousand times before.

“I wouldn’t have left forever,” he breathes, allowing his eyes to drop closed—comfortable and safe, “No matter how far apart we are, I’ll always come back to find you.”

 

* * *

 

Shiro started meeting him in front of his room in the morning, with the offer of joining him for breakfast. He would find him in the halls during free period for lunch. After their evening classes, they would eat dinner in the same abandoned spot, and Shiro would follow him to the simulation room and do his homework while Keith practiced taking flight.

It was a strange arrangement, one that he’d never even thought about before. Shiro introduced him to a few of his friends. They laughed around him and told their jokes. They behaved as though Keith were suddenly just another face within their group, as though there was nothing out of place about him squeezing in.

Shiro still smiled in the same way. He still talked so gently that Keith felt as though he were a baby being cradled by its mother, as though he were something precious in the presence of someone who loved him.

And he embraced it. Somehow, he only became better at the simulator. Somehow, even his grades climbed just a little bit higher up. It was as though Shiro's friendship had opened new doors to a life that he never knew that he could have, as though he were the secret ingredient that Keith never knew he'd been missing until he'd finally tasted it.

Shiro asked him one day, “When’s your birthday anyway?” and he’d told him, because that must have been a normal thing between friends. That must have been part of the roster of information that you needed to learn about a person when you got to know them. He tried not to think about it too much at the time, what anyone would even do with that information.

And one afternoon, when he’d forgotten about the whole ordeal, he found a small box wrapped neatly on his bed—like the ones in the movies, with smooth, carefully wrapped paper and a shiny, satin bow.

The card on top read, _“Happy Birthday”_ , and the cake inside even said his name.

And he recognized the flavor of it—made with so much love that it was almost too sweet.

He still didn’t understand Shiro.

Shiro was popular with everyone, but especially with girls. They’d follow loosely behind him in the halls, whispering among themselves as he went about his business. At times, they’d give him little notes, small gifts, passing glances and touches that lasted too long for Keith’s liking. He didn’t think about why it bothered him so much. He figured that he must have just been jealous—that if Shiro went off and got himself a girlfriend, he wouldn’t have time for their meals together anymore.

They were studying in the library one day—Shiro marking up one of Keith’s more unfortunate essays with a red pen, and Keith wriggling uncomfortably in his chair with every added check mark. It was early Spring, one month before the Kerberos mission was set to take place, and Keith could feel the time slipping through his fingers faster than he could hold on.

 _“It’ll only be a year,”_ Shiro had told him, _“By the time I get back, I’m sure they’ll have chosen you for the next big thing.”_

Keith had bitten back the urge to tell him that he might refuse it. He might sit tight and wait until they could go off into space together.

It was unnerving how quickly Shiro had come into his life and messed up all of his neatly made plans, but somehow, as they sat together and enjoyed each other’s company in silence, it didn’t feel quite as weird anymore.

He’d noticed the girl hanging around their table since a little bit after they sat down. She’d switched seats at least a dozen times, gradually coming closer and closer until she was just behind Shiro’s back. He wouldn’t have thought anything of that, even if it was a little weird, if she hadn’t kept stealing little glances at them too—fluttering her lashes in Shiro’s direction as though he could see her while turned around.

She was Shiro’s age, Keith thought. He might have seen her talking to Shiro after class at times, pink-cheeked and laughing just a little too hard at all of his jokes. She was a tall girl—with long, curly, dark hair and skin so tanned that Keith could imagine her sunbathing out in the hot desert sun during free periods.

She might have been the kind of person who Keith could imagine Shiro settling down with—the kind of girl who could hang off of his arm, who could make him dinner when he’d been studying for too long. Who could reach his level of intellect and always keep him on his toes. Keith had never considered what sorts of things made a girl attractive before, but she must have had all of them.

She must have been the sort of person who all of the guys wanted to go out with. The kind of girl who would only be suited for someone as perfect as Shiro.

A short, shiny, perfectly manicured nail tapped Shiro on the shoulder. He never flinched too much. Nothing ever seemed like it could get under his skin. He turned around in his seat, a small smile tugging at his lips as he recognized her.

“What are you doing sitting by yourself?” He asked, patting the spot next to him, “Come sit with us. We’re just studying.”

The moment that she returned Shiro’s smile and rose from her seat, Keith promptly tuned everything out. He’d give them their privacy. Surely, Iverson would be impressed if he did a few extra assignments.

He scooted forward in his seat, skin prickling as the girl sat down next to Shiro—just a little too close for comfort.

He pressed his face closer to his book, reading over the same paragraph three times before he finally managed to take any of it in. He told himself again and again that he was tuning all of it out—that he wasn’t hyper-aware of the way that the girl placed a hand on Shiro’s shoulder when she asked him what he was doing, or how his brows dropped low in that tender sort of smile that Keith was actually stupid enough to think was reserved for just himself.

“Keith has Iverson this year,” he told her with a short chuckle, “You know how he is about his essays. I figured, since I’ve been there, maybe I could help with his homework.”

“That’s really nice of you,” she replied, so much quicker than Keith thought was necessary, “I like that about you, Shiro. You’re always happy to help out the little guy.”

Keith scrunched his nose, gripping the pages of his book just a little too tightly between his fingers. Who did this girl think she was? “ _The little guy”_?! If he weren’t so worried about ruining Shiro’s chances of a potential date, he would have given her a piece of his mind.

And really, Shiro had no business dating a nasty girl like her anyway. _“The little guy”_! He couldn’t even fathom the nerve of some people!

“Actually,” the girl continued, pulling back her hand to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, “I wanted to ask you something. Do you think we could go somewhere more… private?”

Keith swallowed hard, jaw so tight that his head began to ache. Shiro agreed quietly, resting a hand on Keith’s shoulder that burned him straight down to the bone.

“I’ll be back in a minute, okay? Don’t let anyone steal my seat.”

Of course he would. Keith could already imagine the hours that would pass before he’d finally get tired of waiting and gather both of their things, unsure of if it was safe enough to venture into Shiro’s room and drop his stuff off. Worried that, after that day, he might never get any treasured time alone with him ever again.

It was stupid of him to think that anything between them was sacred. For all he knew, every single person within Shiro's group of friends had once thought that they were special. He probably made them feel just as treasured, just as loved, and when he withdrew that affection in pursuit of something just a little bit shinier, they'd grappled with the realization that he'd never look at them in that way ever again. His fan club, Keith told himself, must have been comprised of the desperate and the determined, with the straggling students who thought that hanging off of his every word could someday win them back a place in his heart.

Time did pass, but not nearly as much as he was anticipating. Within minutes, Shiro returned, a strange, unsettling frown tugging down his lips.

He seemed as though he’d just hoisted the world onto his shoulders—as though that girl had just told him that everyone he’d ever known and loved had died.

Keith allowed him to sit still and quiet, watching him out of the corner of his eye. He grabbed the pen again, making a few random marks and resting his cheek against his free hand. His posture slouched, as though he might melt down into the floor, as though the weight of whatever agony that girl inflicted upon him was just too much to bear.

“Shiro,” Keith pressed, suddenly feeling so skittish that he might dart away the moment that Shiro lashed out at him for prying, “Uh, what—”

“I’m sorry, I just—” Shiro straightened out a little in his seat, planting on a smile that didn’t nearly reach his eyes. He rearranged Keith’s essay into the correct order, sliding it across the desk to him and setting down the pen. “She—she asked me out on a date and, uh… she started crying when I turned her down. I just feel really bad for hurting her feelings.”

Keith thought about everyone who he’d ever made cry. He thought about one of his first foster families—how the woman had sobbed on the phone with his caseworker, how she’d asked, so earnestly, so frantically that when he’d stumbled in on her, he’d worried that something terrible had happened, _“He doesn’t care about us. Why can’t we reach him? What are we doing wrong?”_

And he thought about the little girls on the playground who sometimes pulled his hair, how he’d shove them back and tell them off, not realizing at the time that the rough housing was their way of trying to connect with him. He thought about all of the boys that he’d ever fought with—how he’d end up being the only one without tear-stained cheeks, how he’d wipe his bloody nose on the back of his hand and could never understand why physical pain made so many people break down.

He wondered, as Shiro folded in on himself like a dying willow, as he bared himself so out in the open, as though no one would come along and take advantage of his weakness, if Shiro understood that there was no way to coast through life without stepping on a few toes. If he knew that, inevitably, being great was the product of knocking everyone else down along the way.

Instead of asking that question, because maybe he already knew the answer, he opted for another that wouldn’t stop running through his head.

“Why’d you turn her down?”

In his experience—which was a conglomeration of information from television and movies, from books read in class and word of mouth—he thought that the handsome guy always ended up with the beautiful girl. He thought that things would just work out in the end, if they stayed together. And Shiro was handsome and kind, and that girl had been both beautiful and eagerly available.

The pieces appeared as though they’d fit together, but somehow, they just didn’t.

“Well,” Shiro’s smile returned, but something peculiar and unreadable glistened in his eyes. The sight of it made Keith’s stomach do backflips. It made his palms sweat as goosebumps prickled along his skin, and he didn’t know why.

Shiro rested his head against his hand again, elbow perched on the table. Keith watched the gentle slope of that smile over the edge of his essay, wondering if the redness against his cheeks was just a reflection of the ink on the page.  

“I like someone else.”

There was something about his eyes then—something deep and mysterious that evoked the sorts of emotions in Keith that he was entirely unfamiliar with. If he had to put a phrase to it—a similar sensation that might help him cope with the abnormal jerking of his heart within his chest, as though it might pound right through his ribcage onto the desk between both of them—maybe he would say that it reminded him of coming home.

And even that was a feeling that he’d almost completely lost touch with.

Shiro watched him for a short stretch of time, drumming the fingers of his free hand against the surface of the table. Keith wondered if this was the same feeling that a fly might feel, wandering closer and closer into a spider’s web, unknowing or not of its fate to become ensnared within its grasp, but pushing forward nonetheless.

He felt as though Shiro had already tethered his claws within him far too long ago for him to ever hope of an escape. Gradually, with every encouraging word, with every gift, with every activity that Shiro wound between them like threads holding their friendship together, Shiro became a fixture within his life that he couldn’t imagine ever living without.

He wondered, in that moment, who Shiro might like. And privately, in the very back of his thoughts, he was jealous of them.

 

* * *

 

“You make me sound like some kind of evil villain,” Shiro says through a smile, pulling himself out of bed and grabbing his shirt from the floor, “Like I was plotting to kill you or something. I just wanted to take you out on a date, Keith. You know that, right?”

Keith spreads out wide on the bed, throwing up his hands to soak in the warmth that Shiro left behind. His legs tangle in the blankets shoved down to the foot of the bed, still dewy with sweat. His clicks his tongue at the uncomfortable way that his skin seems to drag against everything that it touches, and in his thoughts, he tells himself that this could only be the aftermath of becoming far too trapped within a spider’s web.

Shiro sends him a look as though he knows exactly what he’s thinking. He pulls his shirt over his head.

“Tomorrow’s the big day, Keith,” he says softly, stepping into his pants, “Get some rest, okay?”

Keith nods, knowing better than to ask if Shiro could stay with him for the night, but still finding it increasingly difficult not to bring it up. Shiro has work to do, he knows, but there’s a feeling settled deep down in his gut—coiling together with tonight’s food goo in a way that makes him almost feel sick. He’s learning, with time, that sometimes his intuition can be wrong.

Like with Shiro, and Lance, and the rest of the team, when his heart told him that getting close to anyone was wrong, that they’d only abandon him in the end—sometimes the voice inside of him doesn’t have the right idea at all.

Regardless, he reaches forward and grasps Shiro’s hand in his own, just as he’s turning to leave. Shiro’s smile is a little frayed at the edges, a little more tired and a little more hollow, but it’s still the same smile. It still sends the same vibrations of happiness dancing over his skin.

“I love you,” Shiro tells him, and his kiss is soft as he bends down and ghosts their lips together, “Everything is going to be alright.”

Shiro’s words are reassuring and they’re kind. His words are meant to instill a sense of security within Keith that he knows sometimes evades him. He’s tender as he presses a hand against Keith’s cheek, kissing him again, saying so many comforting words without needing to speak.

But Keith knows, and Shiro knows, as he steps out into the hall and the lights flicker on above him, that his smile didn’t really reach his eyes.

For the very first time since they met so long ago, Keith has caught him in a lie.

 

* * *

 

Keith readjusted his backpack over his shoulder, wiping his brow with the back of his hand and gritting his teeth against the heat. He took the first step out into the overbearing desert sun, reminding himself of the time, trying to reassure himself that it was long enough before nightfall to find some sort of shelter from the inevitable cold.

His skin prickled as he walked. His eyes burned in the light. His throat itched, fingers twitching with the urge to down the last of the water in his canteen—one that he’d only managed to fill halfway during the ridiculous time constraint that they’d given him to gather his things.

 _“Shouldn’t we call his parents?”_ one of the staff had asked, _“Shouldn’t we let him wait until someone comes to get him?”_

The image of Iverson’s sneer was burned into the back of his mind—smoldering hotter than the sun against his skin, or the burning hot pebbles kicked up under his feet and bounding against his exposed ankles where his pants hitched up as he walked.

 _“No one’s gonna come for him,”_ Iverson had hissed, and Keith imagined the feeling of that warm hand clapping him on the back for the very first time. He imagined how proud that voice had been as it had congratulated him for reaching the top of the pack. Like the other side of a coin, this image of his Commander was completely different, yet so eerily similar that it felt as though another spirit had occupied the same man. _“Let him rot out there. If he thinks he’s so much better than this place, let him figure out how to survive without us.”_

And it had been cruel, he’d thought. It had been unjust.

But injustices were only injustices if anyone cared enough to notice them. There was nothing particularly startling about a homeless orphan withering away in the overbearing sun alone, and there was no one left in the world who would even notice that he was gone.

They wouldn’t even have to strike his name from their record books, he thought. No one was going to come looking for him. No one gave a damn who Keith Kogane was, what he was capable of, or who he could have been if he hadn’t been a supernova of disappointment and fizzled out far too fast.

If he hadn’t collapsed under the weight of Shiro’s absence, of his undeniable death, of the gaping hole that he’d ripped right out of Keith’s life and buried with him somewhere on a satellite a trillion miles away in space.

Keith had spent the last few weeks gazing out over the roof at the stars. He would spread his palms out flat against the sky, as though his skin could touch the glass that encased the Earth and mark it with his fingers. He’d tried to envision which direction Shiro had flown off in—where he would have to point to be pointing at Shiro from an unreachable amount of distance away.

When the news had dropped, when the entire school had been paralyzed under a blanket of horror and no one could make a sound, Keith had felt as though the tiles of the floor were tugged out from underneath him. He’d felt as though he was floating out in space, helpless and cold and gasping for breath.

Unlike the fantasies that had fueled his determined fire before, he hadn’t felt comforted by it. Space didn’t mean freedom then. It didn’t mean home. It didn’t mean capturing that missing piece of himself and holding it so closely that he could finally feel whole.

On that day, when news of the Kerberos mission’s failure had rattled through the school like a death march, Keith had thought that space sounded a lot like a shallow grave, and that somewhere out there, Shiro had a mother who was crying for him.

And the other two—Matt Holt and the Commander. Shiro had told him about them before, he’d introduced him to Matt, as one of the many friendly faces in his group of friends.

 _“Matt and Commander Holt are going to be joining me,”_ he’d told Keith, as they'd left the group and made their way down the hall for lunch one day, _“Commander Holt’s leaving his wife behind again, and I guess she isn’t very happy about it. Matt has a younger sister, Katie. She says she wants to be a pilot when she grows up. Commander Holt’s poor wife has her hands full with all of them.”_

His eyes had crinkled at the corners as he’d laughed. Keith had wondered if he felt guilty for leaving his own family behind. He’d wondered if he knew that Keith felt as though he was packing their combined existence up inside of his suitcase and locking it away on the ship. He wondered if Shiro knew that he’d been counting down the days with growing anxiety, grasping desperately at their final weeks together like a dying man’s trembling fist clutching an antidote.

Those days had passed quicker than he could have imagined. In a flash, Shiro was gone, and in his absence, Keith’s old life had felt far too stiff and ill-fitting, as though he’d outgrown it entirely.

In the glossy wood of their shared table in the back of the cafeteria, Keith had etched out Shiro’s name. If anyone were to find it, if they thought for even a moment that they could take residence in their spot and reclaim it for their own, they would know that Takashi Shirogane belonged there. They would know that he’d left a mark there that could never be erased.

Keith trudged through the desert, sweat trailing down his forehead and dripping from his chin. His breath felt strained, heavy in the pits of his lungs as he heaved to force the air out. Everything felt far too dry, far too heavy like a heated blanket stretched over his face. The blurry lines of heat sizzling from the dirt disorganized his thoughts—distracted him while he should have been looking for a cool place to hide.

In the distance, among the rising heat swirling in the air and the dark silhouette of cacti casting long shadows onto the ground, he thought that he saw a hint of something—some kind of movement, as though he wasn’t completely alone.

A voice calling out to him, a serene smile. A hand reaching out and begging for him to grab on.

 _“Just lay down, Keith.”_ Shiro’s voice was soft, his breath warm. His eyes were dark and hooded, black pebbles glimmering in the summer sun as they tried to pick Keith apart, as they had many times before. _“Just go to sleep. When you wake up, we can be together. If you go to sleep, you can find me.”_

For a single, tortuous second, Keith considered doing just that. He imagined that the sand beneath his feet could be soft—that once the burn settled in and he closed his eyes to the sun, it might have been like tucking himself into bed. And maybe the scorching light bleeding down on him could begin to feel like Shiro’s touch. Maybe, as he slipped away into the serene abyss of endless sleep, he could imagine that he really would find Shiro in his dreams.

That maybe, if there really was anything awaiting him after death, Shiro could have found that place too.

But then he tipped his head back and looked at the sky. The clouds were puffed out and white against their pale blue backdrop, like fat, bone-colored fish swimming in an endless sea. He thought about Shiro out there, somewhere, either rotting away in the atmosphere of some unknown planet, or hiding fearfully as the last of his oxygen dwindled in its tank, praying to a deaf God that someone might venture out to find him.

He thought about the way that Shiro had dipped his fingers into his life and disrupted his surface, mixing up all of the ideas that he had about the world with his effortless charisma, his kind heart, and his tender, loving smile.

He didn’t have to contemplate what Shiro would have to say about his current predicament. He knew that he’d be faced with an entirely new expression—one of mourning, one of disappointment, one of the sadness of realizing that Keith had thrown his future away because the Galaxy Garrison had stolen Shiro’s away from him.

_A pilot error._

He felt bile rising in his throat.

His vomit sizzled on the hot ground like eggs popping in a pan. The sight of it alone turned his stomach all over again, but nothing but an empty retch worked its way up through his throat. Shiro’s apparition stayed on him like a ghost, whispering in his ear as he trudged along, reminding him over and over again of how easy it would be to just give up.

“You know how I know that you’re not real?” he asked the air, not surprised in the least by the false Shiro’s empty, silent smile, “The real Shiro would never allow me to give up. The real Shiro would be pissed at me for even thinking about it.”

The hallucinations persisted, but he found comfort in them. Sometimes, the image of his father would tell him to come home. Sometimes, the smudged out face of a woman he’d only imagined in his dreams would tell him that she loved him.

And sometimes Shiro would flicker back into his path, telling him that safety was just ahead, telling him to keep walking until he found the lion in the mountainous caverns.

Just as the sun began to slink down beyond the horizon, grasping its greedy paws into the daylight and dragging it down, he found the remnants of a house lurching forward and back in the wind, held up by a force so indecipherable that at first, he wondered if it was also an illusion.

Shiro prompted for him to go inside, telling him softly, _“You’ll have to seek out the lion tomorrow. For now, you need to rest.”_

Keith didn’t understand why his mind was so hyper-focused on lions. He’d only ever seen them on the discovery channel late at night, when his father passed out in his recliner with a beer in his hand, leaving Keith alone to flip through the channels until he found something suitable for a child to watch.

He’d never been too terribly interested in lions. He’d always preferred lizards and snakes. He’d always liked how independent they were, and a pack animal like a lion was anything but a loner.

He shook his head to chase away those prying thoughts, all but tumbling through the front door of the shack. It was cold by then, but inside it was warmer—warm enough that he didn’t feel the creeping darkness of sleep reaching him quite as swiftly.

He closed the door, flipping the flimsy lock. He gathered all of the blankets and made himself a barricade against the cold. There was one mouthful of water left in his canteen. He drank half of it, tasting bile and sand on his tongue, feeling so lightheaded that he was worried to fall asleep.

But eventually, sleep came. And the morning welcomed him with a cord of boiling sunlight stabbing through the cracks in the windows.

He’d dreamed of onyx eyes watching over him. He’d dreamed of big, soft hands combing through his hair. He’d dreamed of finding Shiro in the dark crevices of the universe, bringing him home, and never letting him go.

The Shiro in his dreams held him close and kissed him as though he’d been born to kiss no one else—as though they’d been made to love each other, and those pieces, while together seemed to angular, too abnormal to match—

In his dream, they were a perfect fit.

Shiro had run fingers over the aching, vulnerable nakedness of his body. He’d unraveled him and tied him back together, good as new. Keith had been born again in Shiro’s hands.

And just before he’d woken up, as his consciousness pulled him slowly from sleep, Shiro had whispered, wet and hot against his lips, _“You have to find the lion, Keith. No matter what, you need to search for it.”_

He was starting to hope that he never saw another lion again, for the rest of his life. He was already getting tired of hearing about them. He tried to imagine that somehow, his mind was trying to tell him to find Shiro. That for whatever reason, he was materializing to Keith in the form of a big, ferocious cat.

But that just didn’t feel right. There was something about Shiro’s urgency in his dream, something that made anxiety rivet in the caverns of his heart. He felt as though, somehow, Shiro’s existence depended on him completing this task. He felt as though, if it were even possible, finding the Lion in the mountainous caves would bring Shiro home.

It was a stupid thought. He was dehydrated and starving. He needed to find water, to find something to eat, to repair his shelter lest any hungry animals come and find him, and he needed to act fast.

Everything shuddered when he stood. The world felt uneven beneath his tired, aching feet. He would die here if he didn’t do something. He would wither away, and that stupid lion and Shiro would never have any hope of being found.

The rickety cabinets yielded a can of yams and a box of crackers that expired five years prior. In the sink, the drain was clogged with soap scum, crawling with the larvae of some insect that Keith wasn’t eager to find out what it would become. In the dusty cellar, he found a bottle of wine nearly thirty years old, a small collection of canned soups and vegetables, and a drum of something that smelled putrid when he popped the lid.

Outside, beneath a tarp, covered in dusty sand and a thick mud clinging heavy to the surface, he found a vehicle.

And in his head, through the confusion of the morning light beating down on him and the heat sinking deep down into his pores, he could hear a voice—Shiro's voice—telling him so softly, so lovingly that he could barely stand it, _'Keep going, Keith. Keep moving forward. Make me proud.'_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I knew I'd end up cutting this into three chapters, but please forgive me! I wanted to put something out this week, and the story was getting very long, so... I figured that I might as well just cut it up again and finish it up next time. 
> 
> There was a lot going on in this chapter, with the current-day scenes and the past, and Keith chasing after Shiro's apparition in the desert... I think it might be a lot to take in!
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it! If you'd like to talk Garrison Sheith theories, feel free to hit me up on [tumblr](http://mothisland.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/mothisland)!


	3. Those Who Loved Before

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One fire burns out, and another only burns brighter.

Kolivan is waiting in the hall—back pressed firmly against the wall, hands wrapped tight around his chest. In just his shirt and boxers, Keith feels that maybe he should have dressed up a little before coming out of his room, even if it’s just to get a glass of water.

A few feet away, he can see the shadow of Antok lurking, watching with glowing eyes in the dark.

“Allura showed you where your rooms are, right?” Keith asks, fingers itching nervously for the hilt of his knife—which he’d stupidly left sitting on his nightstand, “You should go to bed too. It’s not just a big day for Voltron tomorrow.”

He can feel the shadow of Shiro’s voice in his words, wondering if maybe they can sense it as well. If maybe it’s evident to everyone that he’s trying too hard to slip into those oversized footsteps, and doing a clumsy job of it too.

Kolivan doesn’t budge, and despite the lack of irises in his eyes, Keith can tell that he’s watching him. Those glowing yellows remind him a lot of the desert sun: just as harsh and unforgiving. He doesn't want to look at them for too long.

“I saw the human leaving your room,” he says slowly, and Keith tells himself that he shouldn’t be ashamed and he shouldn’t be surprised. He should accept this assertion with his head held high.

But that thought alone doesn’t stop him from feeling like a child again, caught stealing other kids’ lunches during recess. He's full-grown by now, so far away from Earth that no one should be allowed to reprimand him, but his skin still itches, and it takes an unreasonable amount of effort to smother the urge to lie.

“What of it?” Keith asks, voice cracking in all of the wrong places, “Since when is it any of your business what we do?”

He can see Antok inching closer out of the corner of his eye. The shadows spill off of him like waves as he steps into the light—the lines of his mask glistening, the holes where his eyes should be, hollow and foreboding.

“You of all beings should understand how terrible of an idea this is,” Kolivan says, challenging Keith with his his eyes, the jagged corners of his teeth bared through his frown, “If you’ve gotten your hands on that knife, one half of your lineage must have broken down the other. One side of you, be it Earthling or Galra, had to have devoured the weaker part. It’s a bad idea to dirty the bloodline. Nothing good will ever come of it. Your _parents_ should have at least taught you that much.”

The way that he spits out the word _"parents"_ crawls over Keith's skin. Inside of himself, he strangles the urge to start a fight.

Something deep inside of his chest clenches. His veins feel as though they’ve been filled with ice water. Kolivan’s stare, and his words still bouncing around inside of Keith’s head, they singe against his skin, leaving him in a perpetual limbo of sensations. He doesn’t know why his feet won’t move him forward, but he’s rooted under Kolivan’s unyielding eyes.

“My bloodline will end where it is,” he bites out, fists trembling and white at his sides, “And it’s already dirty, so who cares?”

And Kolivan nods—a jerk of his head, a readjustment of the way that he’s splayed out against the wall. Antok backs off, like a snake dragging itself back into an eager coil, waiting for the right chance to strike.

Keith wants nothing more than to find Shiro, than to smother his ill feelings in those big, warm arms, but he won’t go out and find him.

First, he’ll get a drink, and then he’ll go to bed.

Shiro already has too much on his plate. He can’t waste his time with this.

“Your parents must have thought that love would be enough, right?” Kolivan’s voice echoes down the hall behind him when he finally finds the will to move. “They must have told themselves that everything would work out if only because they were in love. Well, let me indulge you in a little secret.”

Keith feels the weight of his anxiety rattling his bones, sliding—cold and hard, like ice cubes down his throat. He can see the shadows of both Galra soldiers stretching out through the corridor under his feet, melding with his own, and reminding him that he’s only one step removed from so much ugliness, so much contempt of the universe around them.

“Love won’t save you from anything. Love will destroy him, and love will destroy you.”

He tells himself that he doesn’t believe it, that Shiro is too strong.

But the thought of revisiting the desert, of ending the Voltron mission and returning home, it’s a threat that clings to his skin no matter how much distance he puts between himself and that terrible place.

It’s the ugly truth that he knows he can’t run from for long.

Somewhere on the ship, Shiro is consulting with Allura, making plans for tomorrow.

And he doesn’t understand how he’s already lost—by loving someone like Keith. By convincing himself that either of them are suited for something as unrealistic and cliche as a happy ending.

 

* * *

 

The rescue mission was botched beyond repair, but somehow, as the morning light began to filter through the dark clouded skies, and the group of strangers who had unfortunately decided to tag along all the way back to his little shack, were rolling uncomfortably on the floor—

Shiro was still back. He was alive. He was missing a few pieces, but he was okay.

He’d awoken long before the night was through, springing up from the couch with sweat dotting his brow, a haunted look shadowing his eyes where Keith so yearned to find warmth. He was nothing like the idealized version of himself that Keith had imagined for so many nights in his dreams. No longer gawky and lean, no longer boyishly handsome with smooth, pristine skin. No longer young at heart and so innocent in the face of what ugliness the world had to offer.

What had happened to him, Keith had no idea.

But he was home. And maybe that was still enough.

He’d been eager to rid himself of the rags of clothing that he’d come in. He’d accepted Keith’s offering of his old clothes, pausing for a moment, surely wondering how in the world they’d ended up here. Keith hadn’t had an answer to that, so he was thankful that he didn’t ask.

Shiro didn’t need to know how often he’d worn them to bed. He didn’t need to know that it took exactly twenty-three days for his scent to finally fade away.

He didn’t need to know that Keith had nearly lost himself when that had happened—that for the first time since he’d left the Garrison, he’d crumpled up on the couch, heaving with the emotions swirling inside of him like a tsunami. He’d listened to the wind whistling through the broken shutters. He’d grasped his hair so roughly in his hands that a few strands had torn out at the root.

He’d heard the distant howls of coyotes, the chirping of unknown creatures in the night. He’d felt as though the world around him was spinning into an indecipherable mixture of color and painful, deafening sound.

And for the first time in a long time, Keith had allowed himself to cry.

Shiro had seemed strangely comfortable undressing in a room full of other people. The obnoxious Lance had been snoring noisily in the corner, cradled in the arms of his nervous friend. The smaller one was wrapped up in two or three of his extra blankets—the only one who didn’t complain about their smell. Sure, they’d been asleep, but Keith definitely hadn’t been when Shiro had lifted his shirt over his head, exposing a chiseled chest full of new scars and old muscles that Keith had only ever dreamed about.

His face had burned so hotly that he’d worried that it might melt off. He’d turned so quickly on his heel that he’d nearly tumbled over.

“Th-there’s a bathroom over there,” Face cradled in one hand, he’d pointed blindly in the direction of the bathroom, hoping that Shiro would get the idea and stop being so goddamn naked within his vicinity. “The… the water doesn’t work, but you can have some—some privacy.”

He hadn’t missed that charming chuckle—a sound like twinkling wind chimes that he’d missed for far too long. A sound so pleasant that he’d worried that he’d never get to hear again.

Shiro thanked him, and their skin brushed together as he passed. As it always had before, Keith’s arm prickled where Shiro had touched him, crying out for more attention, and hating every part of himself that wished that Shiro wouldn’t have listened; that he'd continued taking off his clothes right in the middle of the room, where Keith could finally figure out which parts of his physique matched all of his dirty fantasies.

He’d come out of the bathroom too big and too awkward in his own clothes. His smile in Keith’s direction had been absent-minded, a far-off glaze blurring over his eyes. He seemed as though he still hadn’t quite come down from the anesthetic that they'd given him at the Garrison, and Keith had hoped privately that it was nothing more than that.

But he would learn, over the following months, that the light would never return to Shiro’s eyes completely. He’d grown and he’d changed, and though the bones of his old self still remained, he would never be the same Shiro that Keith held fondly in his memories.

Shiro had padded out through the front door, numb to the early morning cold as he’d grasped tightly at his artificial wrist. He seemed as though every time that he touched it, he was having trouble remembering that it was there—as though it surprised him every time that his fingers searched for a pulse and were only met with cold, unfeeling metal.

Keith was intrigued by the thing, but it would be a long time before he garnered the nerve to touch it. It would take months of talking himself up, gathering strength, telling himself that Shiro needed someone to remind him that he was still alive and still human after whatever unspeakable horrors he’d lived through, before Keith could reach out to him.

Lance was the first one to wake up. He grumbled about uncomfortable Garrison beds, cracking his back with a big stretch before rubbing the sleep from his eyes. This awoke his buddy—Hunk, Keith remembered—who whipped his head around and took in their surroundings as though he thought that all of last night must have been an incredibly realistic nightmare.

The youngest one—Podge, or… Phil, or something like that—was the last one to nod awake, but he didn’t complain about the stink of the shack or the sun already beginning to bleed a heavy heat into the room. He adjusted his glasses, peering through the blinding shards of light through the curtains at the home that Keith had made for himself.

“Did you build this place?” He asked, turning those wide, far too innocent, far too accepting eyes up at Keith.

Keith scoffed, shoving his way through the door without a word. Through the hum of the wind and the howling of the night’s last straggling coyotes, he could hear Lance’s snide jeer of, _“I told you he was an asshole, Pidge. He thinks he’s too good for everyone else.”_

Shiro was standing at the tip of the hill, a black dot against the streaking oranges and faded pinks of the morning sky. Keith shook away the tendrils of memory, chest feeling as though it was caving in as he convinced himself that this wasn’t just another mirage.

It was really Shiro. He was really back.

He was safe.

Shiro was looking out at the endless nothingness of sand and of sweltering heat. His eyes flicked from the tall cacti to the scorpions scuffling through the dirt, to the assortment of jagged boulders and sparkling rocks scattered along the ground. It might have looked a lot of Kerberos. It might have been bringing back a lot of unpleasant memories.

Keith hesitated, but eventually, his hand grasped Shiro by the arm.

Warm and soft. _Human_.

He felt lightheaded, so elated that he might float away. Shiro’s eyes were distant and guarded. His smile was a poor caricature of what it once might have been.

Keith imagined then, taking Shiro’s photo and putting it through a paper shredder—gluing together the pieces with just a few missing. He imagined taking everything that he knew about Shiro and molding a copy in his image, but somehow, he could never get it right.

He wondered what sorts of things Shiro had left behind on Kerberos. He wondered which parts of himself he had lost. Shiro’s haunting smile reminded him of a clock counting down, of sand slipping through an hourglass, of the realization that no person could come back from the dead without a few pieces getting lost in the afterlife.

A ghost, he thought. After all this time, Shiro was still only a ghost.

And still, as they headed back into the shack, as the others gathered around, humming with an excited energy that he didn’t entirely understand, he was more than happy to accept that.

Keith had always been good at breaking things, and now, he wondered how good he could be at putting someone back together.

 

* * *

 

Coran is in the kitchen when Keith finally manages to find his way in there. He’s fiddling with something that almost looks as though it could be a coffee pot, but the translucent orange slime bubbling and steaming from the nozzle makes Keith’s stomach turn in ways that coffee never has.

At first, it seems as though Coran might ignore him. That’s fair enough, really, as they haven’t had the time to talk through their problems the way that he has with Allura—and he wonders momentarily if he’ll have to go through the entire awkward process with every single member of the team.

_‘Hello, my name is Keith Kogane. I’ve been part Galra my entire life and I never even knew. I hope you can forgive me for my heritage.’_

He clamps his jaw tight, muscles twitching in discontent as he drags himself toward the cabinet for a glass. Well, _maybe_ it could be considered a cabinet, but he doesn’t really feel like contemplating what exactly the strange mechanical chute that spits out clean glasses and seemingly devours them once they're returned could actually be labeled in human terms, when there are more important things to be thinking about. Things that he’s also entirely too tired to address.

Like Kolivan’s words still rattling around in his head, or the way that Coran’s eyes are burning through his back like tiny, white-hot coals.

He fills his glass, holding it up to his lips with hands so shaken with anger that he spills a little down his chin. Coran is still watching quietly, flitting around as though he has something to say, but just can’t quite find the right words.

“Do you need something?” Keith spits, turning sharply toward him, “If you’re trying to figure out if my skin is a little purple too, I swear—”

Coran raises his hands, twitching in his nervousness, as though he’s really convinced himself that Keith’s Galra rage will materialize just now, after they’ve known each other for so long. Shiro didn’t act as though anything was different, he thinks. Shiro accepted him as he was immediately.

He thinks about his father telling him, so many years ago, to never trust other people.

Maybe Shiro is just different than the rest. Maybe he’s an outlier that should never be considered. It seems as though the rest of their team is determined to talk about this, one after the other. It seems as though they believe that he owes each of them a separate explanation.

“N-no, Keith, I—” Coran lowers his arms, looking a little bit too much like a deflated balloon for Keith’s liking. It makes him feel like a bully, like the kind of person who Lance claimed that he was before they ever teamed up—

_‘He thinks he’s too good for everyone else.’_

As though he hasn’t been completely terrified his entire life.

“I’m worried about Shiro,” Coran says quietly. He’s meek and apologetic, resting a hand against the counter and leaning his weight against it, as though he’s just as tired as everyone else. “Doesn’t he seem as though he’s sort of… planning for the end?”

Keith freezes, taking a few short breaths to still the rampaging emotions that Coran’s words kick up inside of him. He can feel the sharp tug of goosebumps budding against his skin, the chill of fear sinking through his pores and strangling his heart. For a moment, all that he can do is breathe. For a moment, he feels validated in the realization that he isn’t the only one who's noticed how suspicious Shiro has been as of late.

_“I want you to lead Voltron.”_

What a joke, he thinks. What a sick, horrible joke.

He sets his glass down on the counter, sending Coran a look as though challenging him to say anything about the fact that he didn’t hand it over to the chute, only a few inches away. And he turns on his heel, ignoring the way that his heart clenches at the crestfallen look that Coran is sending him—branded in his brain.

“I haven’t noticed,” he bites out, because he doesn’t want to talk about it.

He thinks about Shiro’s smile, telling him that everything would be okay. He lied, but Keith can’t understand why. What does Shiro know about tomorrow that he’s not letting them in on? What secrets have burrowed themselves deep down in his mind, that he doesn’t even trust Keith enough to tell him about?

He doesn’t want to think about a universe in which someone like Shiro is capable of doing wrong. He doesn’t know what he would do if that were to happen.

And if Shiro leaves again, where will that leave him?

What will he do then?

Coran doesn’t call after him as he stomps out into the hall. He would never make a good leader, he thinks. He’s not kind enough. He doesn’t care about anyone but himself.

Shiro’s legacy is a large footprint in the ground that he could never hope to fill up. It’s a memory of kindness, or selflessness, of complete disregard for himself in the face of what is right that Keith could never hope to comprehend.

And Keith only knows how to be alone, and to love the man who could never love himself enough—

Even when he’s gone.

 

* * *

 

“There was _a force_ leading you to the mountains?” Shiro’s tone wasn’t haughty or disbelieving, not like the others’ had been, but it filled him with embarrassment nonetheless.

They were waiting outside of the shack for the others to finish gathering their things. The big guy had complained about the lack of running water and electricity, saying something about how it would be impossible to cook everyone a filling breakfast without the tools needed to make that happen.

Keith had turned up his nose. He hadn’t eaten anything cooked in over a year. It took too long, he’d reasoned with himself, to wait for the sun to bake anything. And the desert didn’t yield enough sticks; cacti emitted a strange, smothering smoke when burned. All of his resources had went into finding that stupid, metaphorical lion. All of his energy had gone to surviving long enough to see Shiro again.

 _“What have you been eating out here?”_ The scrawny one had asked, bumping his foot against the couch and recoiling as a small cloud of dust puffed out. _“You mullet looks even greasier than usual. Don’t tell me you haven’t even been taking baths!”_

He’d been far too mortified to consider a good response. Shiro didn’t seem as though he was paying attention—only gazing out of the window with that same lost expression—but the thought of how he’d react if he realized just how much Keith had began to smell, just how long he’d been without a good shower or even a toothbrush, it made him feel more insecure than he ever had before.

 _“You didn’t have to stay here if you hate it so much,”_ he’d huffed, crossing his arms over his chest, _“If it’s too much for you, just go back to the Garrison, Luke.”_

At the time, he’d sworn that he’d had the name right. There were far too many new faces, far too many people to remember all at once for him to really take the time to learn anything about them. The short one had laughed at that, covering his mouth and turning his face away, as though Luke might lash out at him too, for some reason.

Luke himself had turned a very peculiar shade of scarlet, fists trembling so hard at his sides that his entire body vibrated on the spot. Hank—or, something—placed a hand on his shoulder, smiling in the sort of way that Keith imagined a mother grinning down at her obnoxious, unruly child would.

 _“It’s_ Lance _, you asshole!”_ He’d stomped a foot on the floor, ignoring the dust that erupted underneath him. _“C-can you seriously not be a dick for even five seconds?! You know who I am! W-we were in the same class for months!”_

He’d shrugged then, which had only made Lance more angry. Shiro had finally snapped out of his stupor, remedying the situation with a swiftness that startled even Keith. He’d taken Keith by the shoulders, telling everyone gently to get ready and meet them outside when they were through.

Keith hadn’t tried to resist with those hands so welcome and so warm against his skin. Even though his clothing, and even with the way that Shiro’s mechanical hand held him just a little too tightly, he'd felt as though he’d been teleported into his most coveted of dreams.

“You know,” Shiro changed the subject, seemingly because Keith hadn’t even tried to offer him an answer. Cheeks a little hot, Keith allowed himself to turn his gaze to Shiro’s face, biting the inside of his lip as he took in the way that the early morning sun played off of his skin.

Still angelic, after so much time had passed. Still handsome and awe-inspiring, despite the way that time had worn him down.

“I wouldn’t worry about Lance too much,” Shiro continued, and in his head, Keith tried to remember which one Lance was. “It might seem like he’s out to get you, but I think he just doesn’t understand how to be your friend. He admires you, I can tell.”

Keith tried to imagine that slimy little rat ever considering him to be anything but his mortal enemy. For whatever reason, it seemed as though Lance had a bone to pick with him, and he had nothing in return to offer him but scorn. He was used to people like Lance. He was used to fighting off the haughty kids who thought that attacking him was their one-way ticket to being feared among their peers.

If Lance wanted a fight, he would give him one, but—

If what Shiro was saying was true, he had no idea how to deal with that.

“People aren’t rude to their friends like that,” he’d sneered, crossing his arms over his chest, “I think you’re still a little mixed up, Shiro.”

He didn’t like the way that Shiro’s eyes flickered with the shadow of pain at that—the way that, for only a moment, his face contorted into the expression of hurt. It was too late to take the words back, and he didn’t even know how. In the end, he only turned away, clearing his throat awkwardly as the front door opened and the little guy in glasses tripped on his way outside.

“I guess I could try to be friends with him,” Keith said under his breath, grimacing as Lance stepped out into the sun, sending him a sour look. “I don’t like him, but if you want us to get along…”

And Shiro laughed then, so open and so light, so similar to everything that Keith remembered about him that it caught him completely off guard.

“I would like that,” Shiro told him, clapping a hand on his shoulder, “I want you to make friends, okay? I want you to be happy.”

Keith didn’t have the words to tell him how happy he already was. He didn’t understand how to let him know that as long as he was here to stay, there was nothing else in the world that Keith could ever want.

It sounded too needy anyway. Surely, Shiro didn’t share that sentiment.

When all was said and done, and they’d traveled so far out into space that Keith didn’t even understand where home was anymore, he finally got the chance to take a shower.

The two aliens that they’d met along the way seemed innocent enough, and he couldn’t deny that watching Allura capture Lance by the ear and knock him down a few pegs had been the most entertaining thing that he’d seen in awhile.

He’d waited until everyone else had headed off to bed, tired from a long day of training and fighting the evil that was apparently the Galra. Once he was positive that no one else was awake to see him, he’d ventured out into the halls in search of the bathroom.

He’d heard Lance boasting about being nice and clean outside of his door earlier, and he’d felt the dewy warmth in the air that he’d left behind. His shampoo had filled Keith’s bedroom with a scent so sugary sweet that he’d been forced to cover his nose when it seeped underneath his door, and while he wasn’t interested in smelling like he’d just rolled around in a vat of caramel, he didn’t know how much longer he could trust Shiro to ignore his musky scent.

Shiro himself had smelled metallic, but clean when they'd rescued him. He’d looked tattered, but well kept. Someone had been cutting his hair and letting him bathe. Someone had taken great care in keeping up with his appearance, despite how obvious it was that he’d lived through something terrible.

They hadn’t had a lot of time to talk about it, but Keith knew that Shiro had been captured by the Galra. He knew that this Zarkon was responsible, and he knew that he wouldn’t rest until he put that bastard through the same pain and suffering that he’d inflicted on Shiro.

His anger and determination buzzed inside of him as he slipped through the door to the bathroom. There was a chute on the wall for his clothes—he remembered Allura telling them—and he hesitated for a moment before unbuckling his belt and setting it on the floor. His knife, his random assortment of tools, his gloves and his boots, all nestled in a neat pile by the wall. His clothes went down the chute, and the cluster of lighted buttons on the wall blinked within moments, signifying that they were already clean.

The shower was automatic. The shower head sprayed just a little too hot and hard against his skin. He tried to pretend that the water pooling around his feet wasn’t a murky sort of brown. He told himself that everyone else was surely just as dirty after going through so much to get here.

He didn’t feel the same relief at being clean that Lance apparently did. He didn’t feel any lighter, and less burdened by the world when he stepped out and dried his hair with one of the many fluffy towels set out for them. He found himself only distracted by the thought of which of the stalls Shiro must have stepped into, shedding his clothes to reveal an assortment of old scars. He’d wondered if Shiro would feel as comfortable being naked around other people now that he’d come out of his stupor. And he wondered, with a clenching inside of his chest, what had happened to him to make him feel so numb about the concept of undressing for an audience in the first place.

Surely, it wasn’t anything that he could imagine. Surely, if anything, it wasn’t _that_.

He decided not to think about it. It was none of his business, and eventually Shiro would tell him everything that he wanted him to know.

But it was troubling—not knowing how to help Shiro, after everything that he’d done for him. Knowing with absolute certainty that Shiro was suffering alone, and there was nothing that he could do about that.

His clean clothes smelled a lot nicer when he put them back on. A hint of lavender, he thought, or maybe something so exotic and unearthly that he'd never encountered it before. It must have smelled like some kind of Altean flower, and for a moment, he wondered if washing her clothes ever made Allura yearn for home.

It was stupid to even think about. He couldn’t empathize with that sort of emotion. He couldn’t help her work through it, just like he couldn’t help Shiro—he couldn’t help _anyone_ , so there was no good reason to sit around feeling bad for them.

When he collected all of his things, strapping on his belt, slipping on his gloves, and tucking away his weapons in their little hiding spots, he ventured back out into the hall. The lights overhead fizzled on as he walked, sparking out behind his back when he reached the extent of their sensors. It was a little spooky, but he forced down his discomfort. They were floating aimlessly in space. If anything were stowing away with them on the ship, there wasn’t anything that they could do but fight it.

As he passed the common area, the glowing of artificial light caught his eye, making him jump a little in surprise. His eyes adjusted to it, and he could make out the outline of another person in the dark—someone much smaller than Shiro, with worse posture than Lance. Someone fast asleep, slumped on the floor against the couch with their fingers still poised above the keys of their computer.

He took in the way that the screen reflected against the surface of their glasses, and in moments, he recognized the person as Pidge.

Quietly and carefully, he stepped into the room. He wasn’t even sure what he planned to do, but Pidge was sitting so uncomfortably against the couch that something inside of him told him that he should help the guy.

Er… _the girl_ , he supposed, if Shiro’s theories were correct. He’d pulled Shiro aside after they’d fetched the Red Lion from the Galra, asking him frantically why he’d put the team at risk for the sake of a few prisoners who didn’t even end up being Matt or Commander Holt.

 _“I understand that you feel responsible, Shiro, but it’s too dangerous to worry about everyone,”_ His voice had rattled in the air, his tempo sped up and strung out, riddled with the fear that fretted in his heart. _“If we die saving everyone, who’s going to be left to fight Zarkon? Who’s going to avenge everyone else who died before we could get to them?”_

Shiro had seemed smaller then, fragile and defeated, like a leaf caught in the wind. He seemed as though he was folding in on himself, yielding under the weight of Keith’s accusations, unable to even look him in the eye.

 _“You can’t do everything that we tell you to do all the time,”_ Keith had continued, far too stupid to realize at the time just how sensitive Shiro was, _“I understand that you want to take care of Pidge, but you can’t—”_

 _“Katie,”_ Shiro had said simply, but his words had dropped a weight right into the pit Keith’s belly—a cold, hard realization and a quick spark of memory that silenced him completely. _“Pidge… is Katie. Commander Holt’s daughter. Matt’s younger sister.”_

Keith could only think then of Mrs. Holt sitting at her once crowded kitchen table alone. He could only imagine the phantom of her old life haunting the halls of her empty home. What had she done when she’d realized that everyone had left her? How did she feel when she awoke in the middle of the night, needy and lonely, reaching out for the ghost of comfort that might never return?

When he really paid attention, Pidge looked so much like Matt that he felt idiotic for not noticing it before. She had those same wide, ever-curious eyes—albeit far more guarded, far more jaded than he could ever remember Matt seeming during the fleeting moments when they’d interacted.

 _“So you’re the underclassmen that Shiro can’t stop talking about,”_ Matt had greeted him when they’d met, his smile as warm and radiant as the sun, _“Be nice to this guy, alright? Shiro’s a just a big softie at heart.”_

He’d felt safe allowing Shiro to shoot off into the mysterious universe with the Holts. He’d felt, even back then, that when things got too hard, and the world felt far too cold, the warmth of their kindness would be enough to carry Shiro along.

Those thoughts felt dirty now. They were missing and Shiro survived. For all any of them knew, Shiro could have only escaped by snuffing them out.

He wasn’t sure how he felt about any of it, as he plucked the laptop out of Pidge’s hands and set it on the floor. He waited for any hint of stirring, careful not to wake her as he grabbed a pillow from the couch and placed it behind her head.

 _‘If it was between Shiro and your family, I’d choose Shiro again,’_ he thought to himself, brushing the hair from her eyes, _‘I’m so sorry, but if it’s their lives or his… I’d choose his every time.’_

He wondered if a thought alone could really kill another person, if some sort of supernatural energy existed within the vast emptiness of space out here—if he could condemn her family to death by only wishing for it.

He wondered if he should feel guilty for being happy that it was Shiro who escaped. He wondered if he would be a worse person in her place.

Surely, he told himself, she felt bitter that it was Shiro who survived. Surely, if she could choose the outcome of that one thing, she would have chosen for Shiro to rot away in an alien cell, if only so her brother could have boarded the ship home instead.

In his place, she would have hoped for the same things—she would have stolen someone else’s future away, if only to get ahead. She would have accepted the open arms of her brother, and she would have never mourned for the pilot that he left behind.

Shiro, however, was still searching for the Holts. He was still supporting Katie in her journey to find them. Shiro wouldn’t rest until her family was returned to her, and Keith wondered if maybe he was a better person than all of them combined.

Pidge’s computer switched into sleep mode. The light of the screen faded to black, and he was left alone with a sleeping girl, and only his most selfish thoughts to lead him through the dark.

He didn’t sleep well that night. He could only think about Matt’s smiling, welcoming face—the way that, for only a moment, he’d considered that there might have been more people like Shiro existing in the world. And he could only lie awake, contemplating the fact that he was really so terrible that he’d trade the life of one innocent person for another, when it seemed as though everyone in the world had someone to come home to, who would mourn them and miss them if they never made it back.

Time would gradually pass during their mission. He would learn to open up to everyone on the team, albeit hesitantly. He would learn that Pidge loved Shiro just as she loved her family—that in no conceivable way could she have ever wished for Shiro to disappear instead. He would blossom among the love that he felt within this group of people. He would grow into a version of himself so much happier and so much better than he could have ever imagined was possible.

He’d be faced with a lot of realizations—that not everyone in the world was as selfish as he was, that not everyone saw the world as so black and white.

He would kiss Shiro for the very first time, and in that moment, he would feel that finally, after so many years of floating aimlessly through life, he’d found a place within a person that he would consider to be his home.

And the world would come crashing down eventually, just like he always knew that it would.

He would face the fight with Zarkon with the entire team by his side, and they would come out triumphant.

He would run to Shiro’s lion after it was all said and done. His feet would feel as though they were dragging through molasses as he threw himself forward.

The door would open to an empty sarcophagus. The inside of Black would be shadowed and hollow, the entire world draped in the dark curtain of loss.

And he would take everything thundering inside of him—the pain and the confusion, the loss and the absolute self-revolution—and he would shove it down so far that he could never reach inside of himself and touch it ever again.

Allura’s hand would feel like hot iron against his shoulder. Lance’s eyes would look blurry and far too blue. Pidge’s damp face would be a green smear in his vision, and the world would shift around him.

Indecipherable and far too big.  

 

* * *

 

At the end of the day, Keith removes himself from the mournful bubble of his fellow pilots. He ignores Kolivan’s white-hot stare against his back—the way that Allura’s eyes follow him, the small downturn of Coran’s lips, and the jerk of everyone’s shoulders as he passes, as though they’re just waiting for him to explode.

He ventures through empty halls—the spot where Shiro pressed him up against the wall and kissed him, the little dark corner where they had their first fight. He can’t even remember what they were fighting about anymore. He can’t remember anything right now but the razor-sharp image of Shiro smiling down at him, praising him, asking him to lead the team once he inevitably disappeared.

The bastard, he thinks. The lying, cheating bastard.

He’d known all along that he would leave, that he’d dump this burden on Keith’s shoulders and he’d dissolve into the universe like mist.

Keith finds himself stomping through the automatic doors into the bathroom. The ship is still damaged from the fight. The lights flicker on and off overhead, casting a haunting glow down over his face. Each of the five showers power on within their stalls, blasting water down on the tile, fogging the mirrors, and sending specks of water pattering against Keith’s skin.

He looks at his reflection, dragging his fingers over the mirror’s surface. Behind the fog, he finds the face of a boy who he still doesn’t recognize completely. He can’t look at himself and grasp why Shiro would have ever found him interesting. He’s never been able to reach inside of himself and find anything worth holding onto.

He finds skin too pale stretched over jagged bone. He finds hair too dark and too much—eyebrows that perpetually look angry. Hair that never wants to sit in the way that it should. He finds the subtle slope of muscle where anyone else would look for curves. He finds a frown where he should be welcomed with a smile.

He finds emptiness where any normal person would find a heart.

The crack of his fist against the mirror is lost under the showers' spray. The cry strangled through his throat echoes against tall, dark walls. He punches his reflection until he can’t see his face anymore through the streaks of blood and flecks of water, until he can’t see anything through the blur of tears.

The voice howling around him must be anything but human. His heartbeat thrums, erratic and far too violent in his ears.

His knees hit the floor. He’s sobbing in the water and the blood, dragging broken knuckles against the tile, screaming and incoherent, thinking only of the empty pilot’s seat within the black lion.

Thinking only that, after so much time has passed and he’s grown so much as a person, in the end, his father was right.

He was stupid to trust anyone but himself.

He was an idiot for putting his faith in his own emotions.

He imagines the tired image of a hospital room—the faint beeping of the heart monitor, the bone-white Lysol smell of the walls.

And he imagines Shiro’s headstone above an empty grave.

He imagines Shiro’s mother crying, never knowing what became of her child.

Somewhere out there in the universe, Shiro has once again found himself in a shallow grave, and Keith realizes, only now, that he was never a place to come home to.

He was one small stop on Shiro’s journey—much bigger than the both of them.

And even if someday, Shiro does come back, Keith doesn’t know how much longer he can hold on.

Everything happens for a reason—it’s a line that he’s heard before. A line uttered by people oppressed under the unrelenting will of their Gods. He’s never understood that scrambling for meaning, why it has to be someone else’s fault, why the cruel hand of fate ever has to be worth anything but the shitty circumstances that you’ve found yourself drowning in.

But now, as he feels the last of his sobs dragging their claws through his throat—as he stills himself at the sound of someone knocking on the bathroom door, glitching itself closed—he feels that line resonate within him, sitting heavy in the pits of his belly, running cold in his veins.

He listens as the knocking dies down. He can’t make out whose voice is muffled through the door.

Everything happens for a reason.

Nothing in the universe is an accident.

There are no true coincidences in this reality.

He presses his forehead into the murky puddles on the floor.

Shiro was always too good for any of this. He was always better than anyone else.

Keith doesn’t blame a God, or fate. He doesn’t blame the Galra, or Zarkon surely rotting in his deathbed.

As he listens to the water hitting the tile floor, as he feels the ache of his swollen knuckles dragging through blood-stained water, he finds that he can only point a finger at Shiro himself.

A light so bright that it was doomed to fade out far too quickly, he blames Shiro for walking into his life. Clouding his mind with false promises, making him feel as though it was okay to be loved.

Making him imagine that everything would be okay, when in the end, he would only leave like everyone else.

And Keith laughs—long and choked and hollow—as he bangs a fist against the floor.

Kolivan was right—of course he was right. Coran was right, and Shiro himself was right—and everyone who Keith has ever disagreed with, so painfully, disgustingly right.

Keith wonders where he would need to point at the night sky in order to reach the exact spot where Shiro resides, an indecipherable amount of distance away. He wonders where he might find his mom. He wonders what the universe’s purpose might be for such a useless, unlovable person.

And he wonders, as the water sputters out and the door to the bathroom finally opens, if he’ll ever find Shiro again.

He’s sitting in a mess of water and blood when Allura steps nervously into the room. He can see her horrified expression through the red-smeared mirror. He can hear the tremor in her voice when she tries to speak.

“We need to find Shiro,” he tells her—numb and matter-of-fact, “We need to find him so he can continue to lead Voltron.”

_‘So I can prove to myself, once and for all, that this isn’t my fault.’_

He finds no freedom in this version of space, without Shiro. To Keith, in this moment, it only feels as though there's nowhere left to hide. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is... the end of that. I don't really have a lot to say about it aside from the fact that editing was very difficult for a wide variety of reasons. 
> 
> Anyway, thank you to everyone who's taken the time to read this story. With it being a huge vent project, it means a lot to me that you've taken an interest in my self-servicing painfic. I don't write a lot of angst, so... this was actually pretty hard! 
> 
> Also, as a silly little after-thought, I figured that I might as well share [the playlist that I listened to while writing this story](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLW5SENGbbkSLgms4pK2sTa9AbNnZKuAHl). Just in case anyone wanted to hurt a little bit more.


End file.
